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
bodies wet from swimming, the summer night blowing over us, bringing us
closer to shore where the surf boomed. Moonlight ignited inside the
water and phosphorescence 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 shining. 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 stillness. I could weave it into a pattern we’d recognize as
important: succor, inspiration, 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 horsehair 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 driftwood 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 turban, whistling through his fingers,
brandishing a scimitar. My mother had described 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 accused 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,
accomplishment 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 someone’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 mystery, 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 quality.
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, seasoned 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 resources 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 perilousness. 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.
Shepherds 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.
Something hurt in me. Wasn’t I deluding him? Was there freedom? When he
stumbled, 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 sandal, 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, preparatory 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. Summer’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.
When will the atavistic fingers come and when will I smell the
cabin’s wick and the nets? Oh, drown me, Egyptian lion, Etruscan
charioteer, lunge and shield: yours is the tyranny.
Surely feminine love is kinder, less responsible, graced with
evasions. Masculine love is a beginning, an intensity that goes on.
Masculine love pushes into the future, asking roots, a thread of
continuity.
. . .