genial face and grin that consistently makes up for mediocrity. Like his cousin, I
could add. But that’s unfair. When I see him screw up his mouth in front of
Kleis, I sag. The next moment he brightens and seems about to say something
intelligent. Then, the cycle resumes. Love, I remind myself, with inward nod, can
be curious.
Well, I am playing the game—if it is a game—circumspectly, knowing winds
can be fickle. I gather news from my girls who too often babble.
“See, how she conducts herself! She’s grown up!”
“My, they’re serious!”
I am aware of her airs.
Am I to forget her clandestine meetings of a few months ago and expect her
golden head to settle down?
She confides in me and I conceal my smiles.
However, doubts from deep inside prompt me to accept and not go in for
ridicule: where is another daughter, where is the boy suited to your taste? Is she
to fall in love your way? Deeper, I discern the sacredness of life, elements of
faith and love.
Thinking these things, I go where the hills plunge to the bay: I listen, under
my parasol: there is much more than sound or silence: I am confronted by yes-
terday, in the gulls: I squint, and there, on milky horizon, I glimpse the spirit of
man, blundering, a plant in his hand, a rope dragging behind him, a dog by his
side: what is the rope for?
I think of my school and how taxing it is to teach kindness, moderation and
beauty: yet, I am confident, teaching is worth while and living worth while: good
meals, laughter, music, dancing, love: they are there with him and his dog and the
rope, in sound or silence.
Kleis, may you find a good way, all the way.
For my part, my relationship with Phaon affords discovery, Sumerian lassi-
tude, great rivers and forests, prowling sand, the bay and its currents, the hull
dipping, the rower heaving his arms, groaning.
Illusion, deceit, whatever it is, this is the happiest period of my life.
As I walked by the columns of my garden, I recognized that never have I ac-
complished so much. I have unlocked doors. I see my esthetic way: my personal
recollections have pulled out of ruts. I have uncovered uniqueness, sensibility... I
have seen what it has cost man to survive: dunes against dunes, lack of water,
perilous heat: I have weighed his potential, his grace, his beauty. I have sensed
that appalling black that existed before the coming of books. I have heard torn
sail and smashed rudder. I have felt the foundering.
That darkness must not come again!
We must see to that!
I walked among my statuary and benches, absorbing the difference in roses:
home and happiness were secure in me: my writing must be a part of this place:
marble benches, a face augustly seaward, lichened with green: another face
turned toward the sun, his enigma personal, his serpent’s head prowling through
a disc.
(
I found this in my journal, written more than fifteen years ago:
Yesterday, Cercolas and I spent the day in an olive grove where men were
knocking olives off the trees...we walked far.
That is all I wrote and yet that was one of the most joyous days. What kept
me from describing our happiness? Was I too close to it? Or was the next day
one of those hurried days and I thought I would write about our day later on?
Later?
A year later Cercolas was dead at war.
And what made those hours precious? It was our accord, the day itself and
everything we saw and did. I realize this now. His arms were around me, or mine
curled about his waist. His mouth went to mine, many times. Mine to his. I wish
I could remember what we said but I remember his smiles and I remember his
coarse brown Andrian robe and I remember how we looked at this and that,
making each thing ours.
Cercolas...your name is euphonious...your fingers reach out of death...I
glimpse your smile.
But is this all that remains when we are gone?
Is this the answer?
(
I have often relived the experience of giving birth.
Had Cercolas lived, there would have been other children.
Kleis was born on a summer’s day, the ocean lapping after
a windy night, a dragonfly in my room, clicking its wings
over my bed. Mama saw it and murmured:
“There...see it above you. Now, I know you’ll have a
girl!”
Shortly afterward, Kleis was born, the dragonfly still
there: how blurred, it seemed, and how the ocean faded
and reappeared as I fought. I felt I would drown in
sweat, drops pouring down my neck. Mama wiped my face and
hands, her voice soothing, as she cooled me. I wasn’t
afraid: no, a new happiness surged through me, even while
my wrists were breaking and my knees afire. Even while
the pain tore me, I was aware of this happiness: I was
bringing life, defeating death, adding to our world. My
heart sang, though sweat drenched me, and the dragonfly,
clicking its green wings, seemed a ragged dot or great
bird.
I was glad Cercolas wasn’t there: I tried to remember
his love-making but all I could remember was pain and
mother’s voice and the chatter of Exekias and the sound
of the sea. When Kleis had come, I thought: my wrists are
broken and my knees burn but I’m glad, glad...and mother
kissed me and said: Go to sleep, darling.
When I woke, the top of the ocean had become pink and
pink webbed the sky: it seemed I was staring through
woven stuff, skeins in rows, with wool dropped and
tumbled between: the pink darkened nearest the water and
stars were visible—a sunset like many others and yet
different because Kleis was here: this was her first
sunset.
During exile, when Alcaeus and I had the same room and
bed, he tried to make me feel our bad luck couldn’t last.
He would roar against it. He might begin the bleakest day
with a song.
“Hungry—let’s go beg!
“Thirsty—let’s find a fountain. There’s cool water in
the shade of a carob.”
Our feet grew blistered. Days I lay on my mat, too sick
to move, he brought me bread or a flower. Kneeling by me,
smelling of the streets, he’d rub my hands...
“We’ll find a way.”
When we shared the big bed at Aesop’s, its sides
painted with flowers, Alcaeus cheered, reminding me of
our luck.
“Remember those candle stubs I found?” he laughed.
“Remember the roast lamb I stole—how the guy rushed after
me, jabbing the air with a knife. Remember...”
I remember my gratitude to Alcaeus and Aesop must not
end. Without their help I would have died.
I dreamed the other night that Alcaeus and I were
exiled again, that Alcaeus came to me, as I lay between
heaps of dung: he crawled toward me, clothes in rags,
exhausted, blind. I opened my cloak and offered my
breast—wanting to suckle him.
Waking, I realized how late it was.
Four of us, with Libus as guest, had supper at a table
on the porch, a reception to honor Anaktoria’s
return...bourekakia and stuffed grape leaves, Anaktoria
serving, maturer with that overnight bloom, that
overnight assurance.
“Do you like bourekakia?” she asked Libus, too
obviously thinking of him, offering him stuffed leaves
instead of bourekakia, offering herself, at least for the night, something
in that spirit, making fun of Telesippa, her newcomer rival, who was also
interested in Libus, diverted, momentarily by someone’s comment about my
harp, a point to bandy for effect: how charming they were, bathed and
perfumed, Telesippa in her city clothes, Anaktoria in her Cretan style, Gyrinno’s
jewels amusing us, the topaz swallowing her throat.
“You see Sappho’s harp has twenty strings and is for Mixolydian songs.”
The topaz tinkled and a smile went round, coaxing us to feel better.
I told them about the harp I had invented, admiring them as I talked, hair,
shoulders, arms...enjoying each girl. I realized they were especially mine. No one
else would have such an opportunity to influence them.
We listened while Anaktoria described her visit, her baby sister, the sailor
who died on the wharf, the arrival of an Ethiopian girl, slave for a merchant. She
talked as I had taught her, gestures well timed, head poised. She has lost her
island mannerisms, such as gulping impulsively and biting off chunks of food.
Brushing aside her shoulder-length hair, blue eyes a little wild, Telesippa gos-
siped about her dressmaker, “the best in Athens,” whose “tattling is incessant.”
Libus steered the conversation to something sound and Atthis carried on:
yes, no doubt, teaching helps.
Later, we sat on our terrace and passed around sweets and nuts and Libus
joked, sultry jokes of the last generation, wanting to impress the girls.
Old tiles underfoot...youth around me...the thick walls of my house above the
sea... I relaxed until someone mentioned Phaon and I saw him working on his
boat, hands stained with oakum, knees rough from the planking.
“Phaon—I say good night to my girls. You’ll be with me, soon. Soon, I’ll be
buried under your mouth.”
Tomorrow, we meet after the games on the field.
I’ll see him there, legs flashing, discus flying, his spear digging its hole. I’ll see
him rock with laughter and splash himself clean.
(
Alone, I rubbed my hands over my body, thighs, breasts, ankles, wrists and
shoulders: my flesh is firm: I know, as I sense my own integrity, that before long
I must lie in death.
No waking touch on my belly and knees, no chance to comb and dress my
hair at leisure, no mirror for dawdling, no winging of gulls.
(
Poseidon
Of the poems I have written recently, I like these most:
Love, bittersweet, irrepressible,
Loosens my legs and I tremble.
.
I could not hope
To touch the sky
With my two arms...
.
The sun sprays the earth
With straight-falling flames...
.
O, Gongyla, my darling rose,
Put on your milkwhite gown...
.
When seastorms scream across the water,
The sailor, fearing these wild blasts,
Spills his cargo overboard...
.
The night closed their eyes,
And then night poured down
Black sleep upon their lids.
Alcaeus prefers the last two.
(
In a vase, on my table, a white rose opens and I see the face of Anaktoria.
The rose is the most perfect flower, some say. Of the two kinds, the garden and
the rambler, I prefer the rambler, climbing through the night, bringing its fra-
grance into my room, white in the starlight, ivory in the moonlight.
(
The sea and its waves are something we never forget yet never remember:
how the surf leaps and splits into foam, how the foam cascades into white and
divides into blue. From shore to sky there is blue, in patches like marble, areas
like grey and porous granite, ribbons of blue that submerge in whorls.
How quiet the blue, how serene where afternoon sun polishes a path aimed
for the shore, Cretan, Ethiopian, Etruscan, where men and ships have sailed—
their hieroglyphs ruddered by chance. The ocean is always chance, yet it is
subdued, finally modulated by place and time. Wherever we travel, there is the
element of chance, rain, storm, heat, cold, before us, deceptive, feminine, wrap-
ping us in fog, cities, deserts, islands, birds, starry decks and windless watches.
We never remember the sea because it alters momentarily, making rainbows,
spreading colonies of butterflies, floating celery stalks, turtles, heaving shells and
driftwood—beaching itself with footprints that fill with seepage or disappear
underneath the wave.
(
Cercolas and I had such fun, when we were newly married and rode our
white mares, across the island and along the shore, sometimes swimming them.
When the oldest became sick, I put a pillow under her head and tended her until
she died, on the beach, beneath the thatch of her stable.
Cercolas took the other mare, to die with him at war, I suppose it was. How
can I know?
Our horses have gone, six or seven at a time, until there are only colts and
old ones—I see them on deck and in holds, their white faces peering, yellow
manes shining: white, in memory of our mares, white as gulls. I wish I could hear
their whinnying across the fields, as they race toward me.
Warriors brag about their fearless horses but I prefer mares that nip my
hands and tug my clothes.
(
Music is a tree, a cave with sea water sloshing, a shell to the ear, a baby’s
laughter, the lover’s “yes.” I suppose it came from the flint, the arrow. Cercolas
was music. Mother was music. The loom and harp are music. I have heard music
in my dreams. I dream many kinds of music when I play the harp.
I like music best at night, under the stars; I like it when I lie down in the af-
ternoon, aware, yet not truly aware; I like it when I am up the mountain, the
wind harsh; I like it when I am on the shore, the beach fire low, sparks rising, the
sea almost at rest.
I LIKE MUSIC WHEN I EAT, WHEN I AM AT THE THEATRE, OR ALONE.
LONELY MUSIC IS MARROW-WISE, AWARE OF SECRETS, REVELATORY IN
SURPRISING WAYS, PRYING, BLURRING—ALTOGETHER DECEITFUL. I LIKE THE
HARP BETTER THAN THE HORNS. DRUMS FRIGHTEN. THE VOICE IS BEST: ITS
STORY IS MAN’S, THE SEA’S, THE MOUNTAIN’S, AND THE SKY’S.
(
How I used to laugh at rimes Alcaeus wrote against Pittakos:
Old Pitt, we found your cloak
Among the fish and fisherfolk;
We saw your mouth gape and perk
Whenever a blouse made something jerk.
I suppose Pittakos paid many a visit to the fisherfolk—he was young enough
then. And Alcaeus was clever enough to wring every drop of satire out of P’s
doings. His foolery endangered many of us. What a disgrace Pittakos remains in
office. How fine it would be if Libus were empowered.
Libus says:
“There aren’t enough of us to overthrow this man...he’s entrenched till he
dies. It’s better to wait. Look at Alcaeus, what has his fight gotten him? Part of
his tragedy comes from his inability to overthrow this man.”
Yesterday, when I visited Alcaeus, I shivered and pulled back. Alcaeus
stepped forward and grabbed my hand.
“Come, darling, we’re having a drink. Join us.”
Libus signaled me to sit down: their dining room was full of phantoms;
shields glared; pennons dragged at me. With an apish grin, Alcaeus reeled across
the room to bump against a table and chirp a drunken song.
It was rainy and dark and the melancholy afternoon and room closed in. You
must pretend, I said to myself. Pretend he can see. Pretend there’s nothing
wrong...imagine...
As the three of us drank together, a scrawny, red-fleshed boy served us,
downcast, looking as if recently beaten.
As we drank, the melancholy of Alcaeus’ soul spread, seeping through taut
throat muscles: intelligent things said with difficulty, good things said badly,
reminiscences slightly distorted. What is more dismal than a damaged life, dam-
aged beyond alteration, no matter how much we care? What more futile than
communication at such a time?
I could not look at him but looked at Libus instead, his ephemeral face
growing more ephemeral as he continued drinking, wrestling with his dogged
silence.
Drink could not help... I fled home.
(
Mytilene
641
Three soldiers have been washed up on a raft, scarcely alive: all of them were
taken to Alcaeus’ house to recover, if that is possible. Libus wanted them there,
to care for them. They are islanders and had been imprisoned over a year. For
days they had been adrift, paddling, foodless except for fish and birds. I hear
from Thasos that one of them, not much older than Phaon, throws himself
against walls and stalks about babbling to himself, begging for water.
Alcaeus is in his element, determined to help these derelicts: he’s captain
again, in command: he’s kinder and more resolute with this trio, which he be-
lieves he understands: oh, I sympathize with these sun-blackened wanderers,
these lovers of freedom who defied jailers. I, too, know what it is to defy, and
what it costs.
I sent them food but I could not go to them.
Later, I changed my mind; I wanted to see them, to see what their failure had
done to them, what their fight had cost. I decided I might be able to encourage
them, so I brought Atthis and we asked Libus to let us in and we talked to two
of them, giving them food and helping them eat and drink, and everything went
well till the mad fellow heard us and hurled himself against the bedroom door
and burst in, to collapse in a heap, jabbering, writhing, eyes rolled back.
Atthis jumped from her chair and cried:
“Uh...how terrible...like a worm!”
Libus knelt by the young man and his hands quieted him. Not a word was
said: then he turned to Atthis:
“He’s been through a lot. Exposure...heat...no food... We can help him. He’ll
be all right, in time.”
With a few reassuring words, he got the fellow up and led him away.
Later, I learned that one of the older men is a cousin of Phaon’s. Phaon has
heard the details of their days on the raft, and I am pleased by his kindness, the
hours he gives to stay with the pair.
He and Libus are restoring them: food and encouragement are cancelling
horror. Even the mad fellow is mending, eating and drinking normally, talking
rationally much of the time. Phaon’s cousin claims he fought with Alcaeus, but
Alcaeus can’t identify his bearded soldier: is it lapse of memory?
Or was it, as the cousin says, the period when Alcaeus lay injured, the spear
wound in his skull healing, those weeks of pain that brought about his blindness?
(
Sappho and Phaon, in a small boat,
drift seaward, oars dragging:
shimmering light seems to tow the boat seaward.
Stripping, bronze, Phaon dives
expertly and brings Sappho a handsome conch:
listening to the shell they lie in the boat
and begin to make love,
a bronze gull sculptured on the sky,
the sound of waves.
P
haon’s crew is loading his ship with pottery for Byzantium, a cargo that has to be
delivered soon. This realization sharpens our love, though he thinks too little of
distant voyages and I trouble him too much with warnings.
Summer is upon us and I accept the lethargy of eating, sleeping, dreaming.
He likes summer heat, our damp bodies, my sticky perfume and sticky fingers...
cool drinks. He enjoys fruit mixed with coconut and has had my girl prepare
mixed salads...
“Fruit. In hot weather, nothing’s so good. And there’s never any fruit at sea.”
“Not for long.”
“You know...when I come back, Kleis may be married. Your family will be
bigger, you know.” He talked languidly, with his cheek against mine, as we sat on
the beach.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
The thought troubled me—fixing time around me: Kleis could not be this
old!
Baskets and dishes cluttered the sand around us, wind puffing, light ebbing to
lavender, fog on the water, floating above the surface, a boat creeping, its mast
slicing misty layers, moving between floors.
What shall I give him for luck—a charm? A coin?
Why not my mother’s drachma? She was lucky: there was no war in her time:
she had lovers and then a husband to whom she was faithful. She did not have
to endure an island without young men and know what it was to live among
women for ten years.
Yes, the old initialed drachma of hers...
The loading of the amphorae was delayed and we sailed in his smaller boat,
with a crew of three, to the bay where the wreck lies, our sailing so smooth the
hem of my skirt hardly swayed. Phaon equipped us for diving and since the
ocean lay incredibly calm, we located the wreck easily by tacking in circles. Kelp
had snared the masts—giant legs of brown. Her masts struck fists against us, as
greenish fish crossed and recrossed her deck. Splinters of light sank straws, fidg-
eting straws that reached the dragon’s gold and red.
I worried, afraid of kelp and fish.
Phaon disappeared beyond our bow: his brown arms yanked at the kelp; he
bobbed and swam toward me, treading water, puffing.
“Let me help you.”
“No. It’s too deep,” I refused.
He and his crewmen dove by holding rocks meshed in pieces of net; they
coaxed me until I had to try, sliding down rapidly, too fast for me: I knew I
could let go of the rock or jerk the line attached to it and be towed upward; I
wanted to be brave and gulped and oozed out bubbles, peering up. I wanted to
put my feet on the wreck but I never reached her. Lungs bursting, I swam up-
ward, soared, unable to see clearly. My lungs hurt a long time afterward, as I lay
on deck, amazed at the crew’s folly and strength: there was no end to their en-
thusiasm, their plunges from deck and rigging: by sunset, they had hacked
through the wreck, entering the dead cabin: when we raised anchor and swung
for shore I was glad, and hungry.
That night, I dreamed of gaping fish that carried coral fans: our sail became a
net that filled with fish of reddish hue, then sank, to be towed to sea: all night a
gentle sea rocked us, the dipper above our rocky shore.
In the morning, while the bay lay limpid, before I could finish eating, our
men dove and chopped. As I lazed, birds spiraling, someone hollered and floun-
dered toward our boat and I rushed to the side to see a sailor with a green cup,
treading water, offering me his prize.
So the men had not been excited for nothing.
Phaon was as pleased as his men. Hunkered on the deck beside me, he nicked
the green of the cup’s rim and uncovered gold, the gold gleaming. I’ll remember
his hands as he passed the cup to me.
Who made it, how old is it, how long was it below? we asked each other, as I
held the cup, our deck swaying.
The crew’s crazy conjectures and laughter went on, as they went on diving.
It was hard for them to give up and sail for home: stars pegged our rigging
and flipped over glassy combers: fish leaped: we watched as great white crests
rose: we slept and woke, our deck slanting, boom groaning.
Phaon woke and we talked, of our separation and reunion.
“You will be gone a long time!”
“Perhaps my trip won’t be so long.”
“Let’s come back to the old wreck.”
“Will you dive?”
“I tried...”
We whispered and saw the dawn, a dawn that had streamers of rain splotch-
ing the horizon, pelicans one after the other in long files, our island in the offing,
quite black.
(
I was sleepless most of the night, getting out of bed, restless because of the
warmth, standing by my window, waiting for a breeze, the stars out, Mercury but
no moon, the stars and the crickets and a nightingale and the sea, and someone,
somewhere in the house, moving, then silence. I was thinking of him, wanting
him, and I began a poem, changed it, rephrased it, thinking, my body needing his
body:
Slick with slime to satiety he shoots forward
playing such music upon those strings,
wearing a phallus of leather,
such a thing as this enviously,
twirls, quivering masterfully,
and has for odor the hollow mysteries,
orgies for leaving, orgies for coming;
the oracle comes, comes with companions,
comes with mysteries, lover of mine,
displays this randy madness I joyfully proclaim.
I started the poem once more...such a thing as this enviously, that’s suitable...
twirls, quivering masterfully...hollow mysteries...there are good things...
Dawn came and there were the sounds of pigeons, gulls, servants coming and
going, girls whispering...the laughter of girls.
(
The bay lay almost black and Phaon’s ship was quiet, its mahogany rails
shining, someone leaning over, utterly motionless. I looked about for a moving
bird or a boat. Huddled on the wharf near me, a man slept, toothless mouth
open, nets over his legs and thighs. A similar mesh covered the water, as far as I
could see.
Wanting to say good-bye, I stood to one side beside Atthis and Gyrinno,
chilled, afraid. The slow unwrapping of the clouds irked me: a number of men
arrived and carried bundles aboard, their motions slow, their laughter irritating.
Was man always oblivious?
Then, from at sea, voices came, shifting uneasily, an oar creaking between
unintelligible words, a dog whining, a girl coughing. Loneliness filtered from the
sky and depths.
The man still leaned over the rail...
“Off with the ropes.”
“Everyone’s aboard.”
“Let’s sail.”
It was Phaon’s voice: “let’s sail”: and he called to me, called to all of us: I
heard Libus and Alcaeus: I heard the oars: as the ship headed seaward, Atthis
hugged me and my loss was in that receding figure at the stern, sail climbing the
mast behind him: had I shouted good-bye?
Bitterness struck me: again I knew I had no right to such a mood. Better to
have a fling at Charaxos, there on the wharf, in his white clothes, sullen, belli-
cose, his friends snubbing me as we walked past.
Home seemed meaningless.
Had Alcaeus felt this way, on his return?
I knew he had and knew he had had ample reason and threw back my head,
as I opened my door, and walked to my room alone, determined to think clearly:
but it was no more than a resolve and the loneliness of those sea voices came
and that voice, saying: “Let’s sail.”
My ocean window called me.
Was that his ship, that mere dot, that point of wood under banks of cloud?