147 someone will remember us I say even in another time

—

It doesn't matter how many times I've read this fragment, it still hits me like the first.

I've mostly seen it quoted in queer contexts, which gives it a specific sort of weight. But beyond that, it makes me think of poetry as immortal remembrance – the poet dies, but their words live on (hopefully). Many poems have been written on the matter; in those I've read, the desire for this sort of legacy is motivated by the poet's hope to record (and thus, preserve) their love for someone.

I always find it quite touching – that you'd wish for your words to be remembered forever not out of a personal yearning for fame, but out of love. That you'd want to let the world know not yourself, but that there's someone who deserves to be known by so many, across space and time.

I don't think any of us can confidently say we'll be remembered well after our time has passed. People get forgotten in decades; how could you hope to survive a millennia?

Perhaps it's not a matter of hope, which often crumbles when faced with facts. And though it's very romantic to say, here is my poem, and you are in it, and I hope you live forever... To me, it's much more powerful to simply believe it. The only way hope survives logic is by becoming a belief.

Fragment 147 is just that – a fragment. We don't know what came before or after, and how drastically it would change our interpretation of it. But as it is now, in the way it managed to make its way to us across literal millennia, it says: we will be remembered. It's not a hope, it's not a commitment or a statement of intention: it is certainty. Sappho believed she'd be remembered.

You don't get to find out if you're right, with this sort of belief. Other people find out for you. How wonderful, to be one in a long line of people, stretching across millenia, who got to witness a belief become and stay reality!