Sapphics

So it is: sleep comes not on my eyelids. Nor in my eyes, with shaken hair and white Aloof pale hands, and lips and breasts of iron, So she beholds me. And yet though sleep comes not to me, there comes A vision from the full smooth brow of sleep, The white Aphrodite moving unbounded By her own hair. In the purple beaks of the doves that draw her, Beaks straight without desire, necks bent backward Toward Lesbos and the flying feet of Loves Weeping behind her. She looks not back, she looks not back to where The nine crowned muses about Apollo Stand like nine Corinthian columns singing In clear evening. She sees not the Lesbians kissing mouth To mouth across lute strings, drunken with singing, Nor the white feet of the Oceanides Shining and unsandalled. Before her go cryings and lamentations Of barren women, a thunder of wings, While ghosts of outcast Lethean women, lamenting, Stiffen the twilight.