He’s equal with the Gods, that man by Sappho
Face to face, close enough, to sip Your voice’s sweetness
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He’s equal with the Gods, that man
by Sappho
He’s equal with the Gods, that man Who sits across from you, Face to face, close enough, to sip Your voice’s sweetness, And what excites my mind, Your laughter, glittering. So, When I see you, for a moment, My voice goes, My tongue freezes. Fire, Delicate fire, in the flesh. Blind, stunned, the sound Of thunder, in my ears. Shivering with sweat, cold Tremors over the skin, I turn the colour of dead grass, And I’m an inch from dying.
Sappho: Selected Poems and Fragments (Carol Publishing Group, 2005). Translated by A. S. Kline
Sappho’s fragment trembles with intimacy, turning desire into a sacred act of awe.
The man is exalted, equal to the gods, simply for sitting near the beloved’s voice.
Sweetness of sound becomes nectar, laughter glittering like light too radiant to bear.
The poet’s body collapses under passion tongue frozen, fire in the flesh, thunder in the ears.
This surrender humanises love as vulnerability, where language fails and only sensation remains.
Sweat, tremors, pallor: the body becomes a fragile vessel overwhelmed by longing.
Desire is reframed not as possession but as reverence, a trembling before divinity.
Sappho humanises passion as both ecstasy and danger, dissolving the self in awe.
Her words remind us that love is not gentle it shakes, blinds, and remakes perception.
Ultimately, the fragment endures because it humanises longing as sacred: mortality trembling at the edge of the divine.
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LOVE I’m obsessed with stunned/thunder