At Sappho on this summery Sunday reading is it.

Students, lecturers, travellers, shoppers, Goths and glam girls eyeball newspapers, books and screens.

A middle-aged guy with John Lennon glasses and a soft linen shirt sips red wine and cracks open the creamy pages of a biography from the stack of books he’s just purchased.

I’m here for the Toby Estate coffee, a quick snack and to finish the cryptic crossword. And yes, this bookshop-café-wine bar named after the Greek lyric poet Sappho is my idea of an enlightened world!

Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos and died around 570 BC. Tantalising fragments of her poetry remain — a mere 3 per cent of her output.

Fragment 31 is her most famous.

The portion I quote here — translated by the Canadian poet Anne Carson — shows why Sappho is lauded for her clarity of language and simplicity of thought.

whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing — oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me

Plato called Sappho “the tenth Muse”. And if Sappho lived in Sydney I believe she would happily join John Tranter and the other well-established and fledgling Australian poets who come to the bookshop for its monthly poetry nights.

I have a hunch she would also be fond of the random graffiti that’s been left on the courtyard walls — a scrawled heritage of the youth centre once located on these premises.

I suspect, too, that she would happily browse the 30,000 titles in the rooms of this terrace-house-cum-second-hand bookshop and then meander upstairs to Da Capo Music.

Or perhaps she’d hire a rehearsal room up near Da Capo so she could teach aspiring lyricists to turn a moving musical phrase.

But what cocktail, I wonder, would Sappho order from her “House of Wine and Spirits”?

• A Lime and Punish Mint (which is a Mojito including mint, lime and white rum)?
• A Heart of Darkness (which is a Negroni including Cinzano Rosso, Campari and Gin)?
• Or a Clockwork Orange (which is a Golden Dream including Cointreau, Vanilla Galliano, cream and Orange juice)?

Cocktail in hand, I fancy she’d urge me to ditch the hot lettuce from my wrap (good call) and suggest that I order dolmades (a traditional dish from her homeland).

She’d chat with me about the words Rubicon and Rubicund as I ponder which word best relates to the cryptic clue about letters I’m struggling to solve.

As I zip around this English-feeling second-hand bookshop, I’m thinking that, even taken in fragments like its namesake’s poetry, Sappho is good value. I’ll head back here again soon to chill out with the work of a new or ancient poet and a cool glass of wine.

My best book discoveries included:

All Souls by Javier Marias, which probes how people deal with the past. Its paragraphs can be pages long or contain one sentence. And at one point, its narrator, a Spanish scholar at Oxford who’s been shopping in used bookstores, picks up a book signed and annotated by a long-dead author whose works he collects. Intriguing.

The Remnants by John Hughes. Critic Andrew Reimer says this is a highly erudite work — “a book about books and also about artists and their paintings. Several sections are parodies or even pastiches of famous (and some not-so-famous) books.”

Julian Barnes’ oeuvre is well covered. On the day I visit Sappho has: The Sense of an Ending, The Porcupine, Nothing to be Frightened Of, Flaubert’s Parrot, Arthur and George and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters.

Movie Dreams by Rosie Scott and That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott were also tempting.

Saphho Books, Café & Wine Bar is located at 51 Glebe Point Road, Glebe, Sydney (opposite the Glebe markets, which operate on Saturdays).