At the Bowes Museum, I stopped in front of a silver statue of a standing woman. Her posture was poised but thoughtful, as if she was listening inwardly. The name on the base read Sappho. It ringed a bell, but only loosely, so I did some digging.

Sappho lived on the Greek island of Lesbos around the 6th century BCE. She was a poet, and one of the very few women from antiquity whose voice still reaches us. Her work survives in fragments—small pieces of what was once a much larger body of lyric poetry. These fragments, written in a local dialect of ancient Greek, focus on love, desire, loss, friendship, and the fine shades of human emotion. They are direct, intimate, and often addressed to women.

Her poetry was meant to be performed, likely with a lyre. She wrote about emotional experiences in a way that feels modern in its honesty and sensitivity. Because her writing often expressed deep affection between women, her name became historically linked with female same-sex love. The word “lesbian,” in fact, comes from the island of her birth—Lesbos.

In her time, Sappho was highly respected. Ancient scholars called her the “Tenth Muse,” and Plato referred to her as “wise.” Yet so much of her work has been lost—burned, neglected, or simply erased by time. What remains are fragments quoted by later writers, lines found on bits of papyrus, and a few nearly complete poems.

One of the most well-known fragments shows how clearly she could express a moment:

“Someone, I tell you, will remember us / even in another time.”

That line stayed with me. Standing in front of her statue, those words feel true. The past is full of silence, but some voices continue. Hers is one of them.