On finding a kindred spirit in Sappho, 
then knowing too much anthropology
to trust my own instincts
Elliott batTzedek

I have had not one word from her
Frankly I wish I was dead	
		Sappho (Barnard translation)

Times change
cultures change
languages change
but the human heart remains the same.

As if!

As if we don’t foolishly scrawl
our ignorance across everything
we encounter: 		
Kilroy was here to claim that he knows that you are
just like him.

As if the world weren’t 
bigger than big
"Shakespeare in the bush"
and all that
etc etc etc

Maybe it is only this foolishness
that stays the same:

a need for analogy
soldered to an evolutionary tangle
reading into what we can’t remotely understand
a meaning
to feed our own need—
the need of our time
our culture
our language, our heart.