The Write Sisters: Poetry Friday--The Same, Yet Different

From: THE WRITE SISTERS

http://thewritesisters.blogspot.com/2012/07/poetry-friday-same-yet-different.html

July 13, 2012 at 12:01AM

Last week I wrote about The Sea and the Honeycomb: A Book of Tiny Poems edited by Robert Bly. One of the poems I didn’t include in that post is this one:

UNKNOWN ANCIENT GREEK POET

The moon has set
and the Pleiades;
midnight, hours pass, and I
lie down alone

Translated by David Leviten

Coincidently, on the same day, I came across this poem in Acquainted With the Night: Insomnia Poems edited by Lisa Russ Spaar:

Tonight I’ve Watched
by Sappho (translated from the Greek by Mary Barnard)

Tonight I’ve watched

The moon and then
the Pleiades
go down

The night is now
half-gone; youth
goes; I am

in bed alone

It jumped right out at me as being the same, yet different.

I offer them both to you to contemplate as I did.

I prefer the first one with its utter simplicity. Which do you prefer? Does it make a difference knowing the author was not an “unknown ancient Greek,” but a woman poet?

Jone at Check It Out will have lots more to contemplate at the Round-Up.

–Diane

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