Sappho to the Moon

I'm reading Sappho's lyrics, attempting the Greek, but being held up by translation. I am simply not used to her 7th century BCE Aeolic dialect. Even so, I can still work it out, and poetry is always best in its original language. I am reading it and the translation given by Willis Barnstone's Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho, who tries to create poetic English cadences. Although her complete poems (there are only two surviving!) are well-known, her fragmentary poems are quite haunting. I was caught by two different fragments about the moon--what is more haunting than the moon?

πλήρης μὲν ἐφαίνετ' ἀ σελάννα
αἰ δ'ὠς περὶ βῶμον ἐστάθησαν

Full the moon appeared
when the women stood about the altar.

(frag. 154; translation mine)

ἄστερες μὲν ἀμφὶ κάλαν σελάνναν
ἂψ άπθκρύπτοισι φάεννον εἶδος,
ὄπποτα πλήθοισα μάλιστα λάμπηι

γᾶν

ἀργυρία

Stars around the beautiful moon

conceal their luminous form

when in her fullness she greatly shines

on the earth

in silver

(frag. 34; adapted from Barnstone's translation)

The first fragment elusively depicts some sort of night ritual by women illumined only by the full moon; in its fragmentary state, only the shadows of this moonliight ritual activity remain. The second depicts a moon's bright silvery light that, in its fullness, outshines all the stars. This silvery moon may refer to one of her lovers who outshone all others in beauty. Remember these lines when staring at the next full moon.