Magnificent Reincarnations
Discards
Although Church Fathers ordered all Sappho’s works destroyed,
fragments of her poems have been found as shreds in mummy wrappings.
In the Main Reading Room
of the 42nd Street Public Library
between the reek of unwashed feet
and the too-dressed wick of floral oils
who never turns a page
I read the wrecks of lines
torn crosswise from papyrus scrolls
by mummy-men who scarified
what Sappho wrote of love
to save the time-worn flesh
whose avatars are what we read
are what we are.
***
About the author: Gerald Jonas is a senior editor at WhoWhatWhy and a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, as well as other journals large and small.
