than on the sea? Like water, light, warm, swaying, the indispensable ingredient,
the transformations, the necessities, the luxury, with the whites of the waves
whiter than salt, with gulls flashing in the sun, with the bow of the boat swing-
ing.
We swam, dove, played, laughed. There was bread soaked in honey and nuts
dipped in wine and fruit, whose peelings we tossed to the birds. There was the
creaking of the sail for our silences, the long brown tiller arm reaching to the
sun, his hands on my shoulders.
He padded the bottom of the boat and we lay there, the wind heeling us
briefly, the water sucking and his mouth sucking mine and the hunger of his
body—the hunger I knew no sea could satisfy. Cradled, we talked softly:
“Was your trip good?”
“We had good weather for several days, then storms... It’s like that, you
know, most every trip. I try to keep far away from the coast, to avoid shifting
winds. I keep farther away than most sailors. It shortens the trip...”
“You’re not afraid?”
“No.”
“When will you be leaving?”
“I have no cargo.”
“Stay...Phaon...”
We had supper and I hated the food that kept us from our love-making.
A sponge lay on the floor and he dipped water over me as the sun washed
over us, sinking rapidly. Why couldn’t it stay for us? I saw him as Cretan, as
Babylonian, as Persian, inventing his lineage. His atavistic hands moved certainly,
oarsman’s hands, netman’s hands, the sea’s...mine.
Nothing’s more rhythmic than love with waves for bed, rocking, sucking,
soothing. I lay there in his arms, thinking of the plants below, the glassy window
of the water, the fish, coral, ruined cities...the lovers of other days, the mother of
us all, love, pulsing in the rigging, in the pull of his legs, the hasp of his fingers.
The rollers were kind to us, never too violent yet tingling the blood. The backs
of waves looked at us. The spray spilled salt on our skin, gulls screaming.
We made love again, better than before, this time under the moon, our bod-
ies wet from swimming, the summer night blowing over us, bringing us closer to
shore where the surf boomed. Moonlight ignited inside the water and phospho-
rescence added to the brilliance. Flying fish sprang free. His body was so dark,
mine so white...la, the rough of him!
Were any other lovers as happy that day?
As we stretched side by side, he said, with sleepy tongue:
“I remember an evening like this, a night of phosphorescence. I was lying on
the deck, almost asleep. A flash tore the sky, silver light...it came streaking nearer
and nearer. I woke some of my sailors. My helmsman shouted. We pointed and
argued. The light hit the water and sent up boiling steam. We smelled something.
Stripping, I swam where the light had hit the water. We were becalmed and I
thought I had seen something white but found only dead fish, their bellies shin-
ing. The largest one filled my arms and I swam back to the boat and hauled it
aboard. It had a brand across one side. We argued, and threw it back.”
“What was it that fell?” I asked.
“Some said it was a star,” he said.
(
“I was born in Pyrgos,” Phaon tells me, his head on my lap. “I was born in a
terrible thunderstorm, in my father’s hut. He was a very clever fisherman but
there were times when we got very hungry and on one of those times we waded
out to sea, he and I, to throw a net...we were hungry. I wasn’t helping much but I
was there, small, perhaps learning something. Ah, that little island was barren
and poor. And there I was in the water, the sun coming out of the sea, blinding
me. And then my father screamed and I saw him fall. I tried to reach him. I
splashed. I ran. I fell. I shouted. We were alone, we two. My father was thrashing
about. It seems he had fallen into a pool, a rock pool, you know what they are.
Maybe he forgot it was there, or didn’t know. I can’t say. But he had been hit by
a shark and was bleeding. So I helped him, as best I could, both of us splashing,
falling, the surf rising around us, big. He fell on the beach and I ran for help but
before I could find help and come to him he had bled to death, on the sand, his
hands on his wound, the wound from the shark.”
(
We went up the mountain, to the outcrop and the temple, spent all day alone,
the sheep tinkling their bells, the heat steady. He knew of a spring unknown to
me and a hollow olive where bees had a hive. Only deep in the olive grove was it
cooler and we buried ourselves under the trees.
The watery brown of his body was mine. I found his voice deeper than I had
thought. I found his mouth. Discoveries went on, nothing repetitive, the wind,
no, the olive shade, or the moss and mushrooms. Crushing a mushroom he
rubbed it against his thighs. The smell of mushroom in the cool, dark place! His
smell and mine; the smell of earth: life was a vortex of fragrances, peace on the
fringes, then a shepherd’s bell!
“I’ve wanted to be a shepherd,” I said.
“It would be too lonely for me,” he said. “It’s lonely enough at sea. I look for
a sign of land, a strip of floating bark, land bird or turtle. I look...there at the bow
I’m always looking...now it will be you, ahead, in the sea. At sea I have my
crew...no, I couldn’t be a shepherd. But you?”
“For me, I’d have more time to think, to write, to gather the world of still-
ness. I could weave it into a pattern we’d recognize as important: succor, inspi-
ration, hope. There is a cliff...you know it... the Leucadian cliff... I’d go there
with my flock and dream as they fed about me, the sea below us, the murmur of
antiquity around us.
(
It wasn’t easy to visit Alcaeus and hear him talk, as he reclined at supper, his
hands close to a lighted lamp, restless fingers, perturbed in a blunted way: the
tensility of the battlefield gone from them: moving, they move in on themselves.
“Sometimes, I want to see a face...your face, Sappho. I want to see many
faces, the faces of my men. I’d like to see a helmet and plume, the scarlet horse-
hair plume...color...what a great thing...
“My house has no window or door. Who wants a house that way?
“What of other blind men and their darkness! What good can that darkness
do them?
“When my father was small he was scared of the dark. I never was. But this
dark has become fear...words can’t break it. Only sleep breaks it. When I’m lying
in bed, on the verge of waking, I think, remembering the old light, I think, the
sun’s up. But where’s the sun!”
Someone had dusted his shields and spears on the wall: I noticed the black
point of an Egyptian lance, the cold grey pennons on a Persian hide: perhaps
they had decorated the sand outside his tent.
This contrast troubled me and yet I longed to share my happiness: the child
in me wanted to discountenance reason: the brown shoulders and rolling sea
never left me as we talked and I tried to comfort, reminding him of days when it
was fun to climb the hills and explore the beaches, fun all day: he admitted there
had been time without pain and wondered why we were eventually cheated?
Fog leaned against the house and I described it and he asked me to walk with
him. As we followed the shore, he talked of warriors he had know, “strategists,”
he called them; he boomed his words, excited by memories and the walk and the
fog, which he could feel on his face and hands. His cane cracked against drift-
wood and I restrained him, to find his hands trembling.
(
The blue of the Aegean is reflected
in the faces of the 50 rowers of the trireme
as they chant and pull;
the blue is reflected on the ship’s hull
and the banks of oars.
P
haon and I were offshore in his rowboat, the small sail furled, the surf near by,
doubling into smooth green, sunset brazing the horizon. We had been gay,
drifting, oar dragging, taking chances with the surf. Upright at the stern, Phaon
looked about idly: we had been talking about going for a swim. Suddenly, he
faced me and shouted:
“Over there...see them...pirate boats!”
“What?”
“Over there, the other way...those three boats...see the red shields at the
bow...Turkish pirates...they’re attacking Mytilene. I’ll row for the beach. Hang
on.”
His oar splashed and the boat pitched; pulling with all his strength, he drove
us toward the shore, the surf rising, the bow high. I thought we would capsize
but before I could make out the pirate ships he beached us and we scrambled
ashore, drenched and shoeless. Together, we raced for the square, shouting at
everyone we met. Together, we dashed for Alcaeus’ house, and threw open his
door.
Men in gold, red and blue uniforms stormed our dock and invaded the town.
I hung on, behind shutters, unable to tear myself away as the armed gang rushed
past the house, forty or more, most of them yelling, one of them, in silver tur-
ban, whistling through his fingers, brandishing a scimitar. My mother had de-
scribed such an attack...I could hear her and see her pained face...a terrible story
I had never quite believed.
Phaon yanked shields and spears off the wall and armed Thasos and another
man I scarcely knew, a visitor. Women and children hollered and scuttled inside,
making for the rear of the house. Something crashed against our street door and
men bellowed wildly at us. I saw wood rip the door. Thasos moved in front of
me, urging me to hide. Phaon, with shield and sword, his clothes still sopping,
threw open the door and beat off a Turkish spear. Catching two men by surprise,
he wounded one in the neck and both fled, the uninjured man, a youngster,
helping the other one, his shoulder turning red, their short swords rapping their
legs as they ran. The injured man lost his turban as they rounded a corner...
“What happened...What’s going on?” bellowed Alcaeus, behind Thasos.
“Turks,” Phaon shouted, checking the damage to the door, swinging it on its
hinges, his hairy shield high on his arm.
Long after dusk, men scouted the streets, all the Turkish boats at sea: the
town buzzed with shouts and whistles: a drum throbbed: the raiders had killed
two and injured several and plundered a winery and mill, removing flour and
filling goat skins with fresh water at several fountains. I piloted Alcaeus about for
a while, until my girls discovered me and begged me home, dreading a repetition,
though by now armed soldiers had set up guards.
Stars shone brilliantly.
The bay, mirror-smooth, seemed utterly innocent of piracy and death. It ac-
cused us of our own folly.
Alone in my room, I reviewed the raid, our floundering ashore, our dash to
Alcaeus’ house, the brilliant uniforms, wild faces, wild cries, Phaon at the door,
Thasos wanting me to hide, children whimpering.
The drummers were signaling each other, the surf sullen, the wind rising.
In a room near me, someone was sobbing. Peace would not return to my
house or Mytilene for a while: how long, I wondered? Peace, how frail it is, how
carefully it must be protected.
I realized I should comfort my girls and not sit and watch the ocean. It was
hard to go to them, harder still to listen to their fears and accusations. When they
questioned me I felt that what I described had never happened or happened to
someone else. Atthis, holding a puppy in her arms, said she wanted someone to
protect her and burst into tears, realizing how unprotected she had been.
Why hadn’t I come with Phaon? What if the Turks had climbed the hill?
“You forgot all about us, you just left us here! Oh, Sappho!”
(
Next day, with my house quieted, I had time to write:
Accomplishments require sacrifice of mind and body; for some, accomplish-
ment will be slow as the sea eating sand. I prefer the swift attainment—it is most
inspiring. Death, because it is an incessant threat, retards progress, inhibiting our
will to succeed, seeping under us at unexpected moments.
Surely, if we are to conspire against death, if we are to get the most of life, we
must be clever, relying on intuition and knowledge, to reach any goal. Surely, the
most important element in life is the humane, the kindly, the uncorrupted, tying
together little things into something worth while, that will have significance now
and later.
(
Poseidon
641 B.C.
Then, what is love? Isn’t it sharing a personality never encountered before? I
think it is this kind of interchange and it is exploring someone’s thinking, with
and without words. With Phaon, it is sharing the sea, the oarsman’s hands, the
swimmer’s legs, yarns on the beach in the firelight. With Alcaeus, it has been our
friends, our families, our town, our writing, our exile—years of knowing each
other. The differences between Phaon and Alcaeus are so many it would be
foolish to try to list them. Comparison gets me nowhere.
I suspect that love is too subtle for any analysis: love is so subtle it escapes
while we look. Being in love is rather like being someone else, laughing some-
one’s laughter, tasting someone’s wine, dreaming someone’s dreams. I feel that
close to Phaon. Together, we share the fire, the fire that wakes us in the night,
that flies into our eyes, the fire that makes my mouth tremble, that makes me
laugh in my mirror, that makes me test my perfume bottles and sends my girls
for new powder.
I steal to him—with dignity. I crush him to me, dignity gone. I lose, I gain. I
cringe, I lunge. Phaon, you are my body, in me, wanting you, wanting... We are
the wanters, haters of nights that keep us apart, haters of time.
Its roaring deafens me: I, I didn’t hear you. I, I was wrapped in thought. I
was making love...I was reliving the sea, I was in the boat. I was planning our
next meeting...I was singing... Darling, I was saying.
(
Riding donkeys, Phaon and I set out across the island, to visit his sister,
riding all day in slow stages, to reach her hut and sleep there. I thought we would
never find it, but that was my thinking. Phaon led us through a jumble of hillside
rocks, through little valleys, right to her door, a hut of rocks and straw, her
shepherd’s crook beside the door.
Kleis is so unlike my Kleis.
She seems able to speak without words, perhaps because words are not very
useful to her since she lives alone. She nods and smiles, her smile serene. Small,
dark, light-boned, she appears out of the past, no sister of Phaon, unrelated to
our island. I had not expected her to be so unlike us. Using her particular mys-
tery, she made us comfortable, made us feel at home, a gesture now and then, a
word, some roasted seeds, another word, as we talked. Her delight in having us
was obvious, coming from deep inside. She has wonderful wind-swept sight,
from the rapture of lonely skies, her communions. She is priestess of self-
contained youth. She shared her food and we shared things we had brought.
Phaon talked of his sea trip, the Mytilene raid, his voice in accord with her qual-
ity.
As our relationship deepens, I am more and more aware of his quality. It is
best seen in his slow, slow gesture. Or in a spontaneous grin ending in a chuckle.
It is in his carriage—his calculating look. His qualities are older than mine, sea-
soned by the primordial: his speech is older, in vocabulary, accent, intonation.
Kleis and I sang after supper, the supper fire burning.
Her sheep were near us, muffled, shuffling contentedly.
Venus hung over us.
How unlike my Kleis, in her singing and her songs: her songs are songs
mother knew: they made me tremble and I wanted to clasp her to me: Phaon
had forgotten most of them but joined us sometimes. We sang of lovers and
wanderers.
She, the daily wanderer, was less a wanderer than any of us: her natural re-
sources were always at her spiritual command.
Kissing me good night, she said:
“I love you for coming.”
Going back home, we poked along, talking and resting at likely places. We
stopped in an orange grove to eat, water rippling by us in an irrigation ditch.
Cross-legged we ate cheese and dates and drank wine Kleis had given us, the
summer smells around us, flowers, so many kinds of flowers in this place. Lying
beside me, Phaon told me more about his life:
“...We met a storm off the Egyptian coast, the wind rushing us, tearing our
sail. I was at the rudder when the sail split. I ordered my men to huddle in the lee
and mend the sail. How we shipped water. The bow crashed. All of us thought
we’d go down but they kept on with the mending, folding the fabric, squeezing
out the water, wiping rain and spray from their faces. I’ve never heard a fiercer
wind, raging off starboard...
“When we had the sail mended I had someone take the rudder and helped
hoist. A wave bowled us over. It was nearly dark and the rain slanted toward me.
Out of the side of my eyes, I thought I saw something on the sea, a man, a tall
man. I said nothing but worked hard: I couldn’t talk or yell in that sea. Part way
up the mast, I looked down. Nothing. In spite of wind and rain, we hung our sail
and swung out of the troughs. Back at the rudder, I saw him, saw him moving,
white, tall, through the whipped tops of the rollers.”
(
Villa Poseidon
641 B.C.
My girls still carry on about the pirate raid.
Gyrinno found a short sword and brought it to me.
“Look, I showed it to Archidemus and he says it’s from the Turks. Those are
rubies on the hilt, he says. Feel them. See...see...”
Her fingers tremble with excitement.
Her breath catches:
“What if they’d broken into our house? It would have been awful. Aren’t you
proud of Phaon?”
The whole misadventure leaves me cold. I think of the burial of our dead. I
see the blood rushing down the neck of the wounded man. There was blood on
Phaon’s sword. He and Alcaeus had bellowed over their victory. Victory?
I pushed away the pirate’s sword, and said: “It would be better if there were
no pirates.”
Gyrinno is disgusted.
What is wrong with man? Is man’s piratical weakness an instinct? Women
don’t go in for piracy. We know the value of living and appreciate life’s perilous-
ness. We give birth to kindness...each baby is kindness itself.
I HAVE FORBIDDEN GYRINNO TO KEEP THE SWORD: SHE MUST GET RID OF
IT, GIVE IT AWAY, THROW IT AWAY, I DON’T CARE.
(
Rain, rain, rain.
The girls appreciate my happiness since a sense of grace envelops me.
We weave and the rain falls, so gently, our looms fronting the windows and
sea. I am weaving a white scarf, quite blemishless.
Weaving has always been the most delightful pastime: I sit and weave and the
wool goes in and out: I can see nothing in front of me or I can see my whole
past, or tomorrow, or Phaon, the ocean, my house, the faces of my girls...
I work silently sometimes, planning, composing. The art of weaving thoughts
must have begun with the loom. The rain falls, and weaves its sounds. Atthis and
Anaktoria sit on either side of me, Anaktoria singing to herself. She is dressed in
white and Atthis wears blue.
Across the sea a wedge of rain scuds, slowly approaching our island. Shep-
herds are in their huts. Seamen are ashore. It is a time for all to rest.
(
At the bridge in town where I had watched the migratory flight of herons, I
met Alcaeus. He was perched on the rail, cane crossed over his legs, waiting for
Thasos. Glad to see me, he pulled his beard, fragrant and carefully oiled. I found
him cheerful. He talked about a Carthaginian ship, in harbor because of broken
oars, after sideswiping another boat in a thick fog. As I listened his face altered:
it was as if he were in pain or remembered something tragic. Interrupting my
comment, he asked:
“What’s he like? Is he tall, this Phaon?”
I described him, touching his arm to lessen his resentment.
“So...he’s not the soldier type!”
“Must he be?”
“No...a sailor, then!”
“Alcaeus!”
“I know...I know...the changes that have overcome me. I know them better
than you.”
“And I know my changes.”
“Must our friendship end?”
“Alcaeus, let’s not go on like this. We understand each other.”
“Yes...yes...of course. I apologize... I should have scorned the war. Why was I
bellicose?
“I could have kept to my books. I understand it takes infinite time to probe,
time to evaluate, time to mature. I have always wanted skill—like yours, working,
as you work, through intuition and knowledge of the past. By probing I could
have come closer to freedom.”
“You have found your freedom,” I said.
“Where?”
“Attacking Pittakos, and his sort.”
“That’s another kind.”
“I realize that.”
As we strolled home, Thasos with us, he kept thinking, elaborating. Some-
thing hurt in me. Wasn’t I deluding him? Was there freedom? When he stum-
bled, I stumbled.
He had been my Phaon. I thought of his encouragement, years ago, when
each of us was desperate. That encouragement, that will to help, buoyed me and,
talking swiftly, I promised him help, promised closer friendship.
Standing at his door, leaning on his cane, eyelids closed, he recited something
heroic and it was my turn to change: my expression must have altered as quickly
as his: his sincerity was an answer to mine: I knew he could not see and yet hid
my face in my arm. Walking on, I felt he was still in his doorway, trying to see
me, trying to understand.
A boy, with a yo-yo, asked me to stop and watch him perform tricks:
“Sappho...I can make it do things,” he cried, dangling his yo-yo over my san-
dal, climbing it up my robe.
Sparkling eyes laughed and I bent and kissed him.
(
Yesterday, Anaktoria and I walked to a vineyard above the bay, a yard of
crumbling walls, twisted, neglected vines, where bees hummed and swallows
flicked apricot bellies. It was unduly warm and we threw off our clothes and lay
on old leaves, in the shadow of a wall, the waves grumbling behind the stones,
coming up, as it were, through masonry and ground.
I noticed her hand in the grass. I noticed my own. It seemed another’s hand.
The grass altered its identity. I felt my naked knee, pressing a stone: it seemed
another knee although I felt the stone. I thought: nature tries to claim us before
we are aware, before we are willing to let her. Swift, she likes to confuse, pre-
paratory to that eternal grasp of hers.
Crickets piped under the wall, asking for cooler weather. Abruptly, they
stopped, perhaps to listen to Anaktoria’s singing. She sang until I fell asleep, to
wake and find her sleeping, hands cupped over her breasts, afraid the bees might
sting them. The wall’s shadow had lengthened and birds were quarreling. Sum-
mer’s integrity stretched from vineyard to horizon.
I thought about the two of us, our fragility, neither of us marred: sometimes,
when someone is loving me, I am especially glad I have an unblemished body: I
know my lover will have something to remember.
The ring Libus gave her glistens on her little finger.
(
Deeper, deeper—our love goes deeper, taking us completely; the early lamps
sputter out; the stars gleam in the windows; there is talk of leaving, another trip
to sea. But we shake off impending loss with each other’s hunger; he says, your
perfume stays on me; I say, the smell of you stays on me. He says, come closer,
farther under. I say, I can’t, I’m stifled, I’m submerged. Oh, impetuous lips. The
depth of having someone your own, the depth of being the heart for someone.
Phaon...the name, the body, the breath on my neck, special ways, his weight
underneath me, supporting me, the sea coming through the windows.
There is nothing better than love.
O Beauty, you know I love him because he is the way I want him to be, you
know he is kind...care for him!
(
A man speaks before the Acropolis in the
moonlight:
“Stranger, you have come to the most
beautiful place on earth,
the land of swift horses, where the
nightingale sings
its melodies among the sacred foliage,
sheltered from the sun’s fire and the
winter’s cold.
Here Bacchus wanders with his nymphs, his
divine maidens;
and under the heavenly dew forever flourishes
the narcissus,
the crown of great goddesses...”
Mytilene
I
have not seen Phaon for days and I feel eaten by rust,
the rust that consumes bronze. I feel myself flake
between my own fingers. Nothing distracts me. I tell
myself I have no right to such feelings; it is wrong: be
aware of the beauty around you, I say.
I have always believed that those who live beside the
ocean should know more about beauty than others. Their
minds should be richer, their faces kinder, their stride
freer. Rhythm should be their secret.
I know this is false but I must evoke beauty. I must
capture the magnificence of the sea and use its power. I
must trap changes and repetitions, the storm’s core and
summer’s laziness. There is superiority in these things,
to help us through life.
But, with Phaon away, few things come alive: I am
seaweed after the gale. Husk, why trouble others? So, I
sulk. Or, when my girls insist, I revive briefly.