Reconstructed Sapphic Fragment #145 and Erasure of Reconstructed Sapphic Fragment #145

By
Wendy Drexler
-

RECONSTRUCTED SAPPHIC FRAGMENT #145

I tell myself that caring for you isn’t as hard
as lassoing the first star from the night sky,
or knowing exactly when that star was formed,
or how. I tell myself this isn’t supposed to be
easy, either. I tell myself, [do not move stones].
Some things take care of themselves, the way,
on any given day, you never need to count
the thousands of breaths you take. Your lost
orthotics will be found. Your sore ankle will heal.
We will find the slotted metal spoon for scooping
soft-boiled eggs from the pan. Once, I made
butter just by shaking a jar filled with fresh cream.
Never realized how easy it really was, the cream
slowly thickening against the sides of the jar.
Not easy, exactly, my arm tired and I had to keep
switching the jar from right to left and back.
But making butter was simple enough and seemed
somehow essential, a survival skill—only the cream,
a jar to hold it, and my arm, the one the writing comes
down. Some work is harder only because you
think it so. Some things just take care of themselves.
That huge boulder in the pasture doesn’t need Sisyphus:
the cows, untroubled, graze around it, boulder
and cows as patient as the afternoon sun that warms
the stone on cool days, and where, on warm days,
the snake finds cover.

* The italicized words in brackets are from fragment 145 in If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, translated by Anne Carson, Vintage Books, 2003.

 

ERASURE OF RECONSTRUCTED SAPPHIC FRAGMENT #145

I tell myself that caring for you isn’t as hard
as lassoing the first star from the night sky,
or knowing exactly when that star was formed,
or how. I tell myself this isn’t supposed to be
easy, either. I tell myself, [do not move stones].
Some things take care of themselves, the way,
on any given day, you never need to count
the thousands of breaths you take. Your lost
orthotics will be found. Your sore ankle will heal.
We will find the slotted metal spoon for scooping
soft-boiled eggs from the pan. Once, I made
butter just by shaking a jar filled with fresh cream.
Never realized how easy it really was, the cream
slowly thickening against the sides of the jar.
Not easy, exactly, my arm tired and I had to keep
switching the jar from right to left and back.
But making butter was simple enough and seemed
somehow essential, a survival skill—only the cream,
a jar to hold it, and my arm, the one the writing comes
down. Some work is harder only because you
think it so. Some things just take care of themselves.
That huge boulder in the pasture doesn’t need Sisyphus:
the cows, untroubled, graze around it, boulder
and cows as patient as the afternoon sun that warms
the stone on cool days, and where, on warm days
the snake finds cover.



Click here to read Wendy Drexler on the origin of the poem.

Image: by Mattie Hagedorn, licensed under CC 2.0.

Wendy Drexler:

I was searching for a form that could embody the challenges and turbulence of caring for my husband as Alzheimer’s slowly but steadily erodes his cognitive abilities. After going to hear the brilliant Anne Carson talk about Cy Twombly at the Museum of Fine Arts in early 2023, I happened to stroll into the gift shop and saw copies of her book, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, on display. I bought one, not really knowing if or how I might use it, but sensing a correspondence between the Sapphic fragments that have survived what has been lost and what was still left of my husband’s cognitive abilities. I began to play with writing poems using the fragments as a scaffold, and by “reconstructing” them, restoring their original wholeness and integrity by joining them with my own words. Because Alzheimer’s is a process of erasure, I then realized that I might try to embody this ongoing loss by erasing the completed poem. The results can propel and reveal stark realities that are the province of poetry’s ineffability, as in this erasure, which results in “survival–hard trouble and stony.” I would never have composed that line, but having it emerge from the haze of erasure is a surprise that feels true to capturing only as poetry can the myriad of emotions around this journey: loss, love, heartbreak, anger, resistance, tenderness, and surrender.

Wendy Drexler
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1 COMMENT

  1. Wendy, this is such a thoughtful touching poem. I want to cry, touch a loved one and ponder at the same time when I read this. Miss you. Let’s get together.

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