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 yesterday, 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
lassitude, 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 accomplished 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 gossiped 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 fragrance 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, wrapping 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 afternoon, 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, damaged 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 believes 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 upward, 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 enthusiasm,
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 floundered 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
splotching 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, bellicose, 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?
I couldn’t keep back my tears: what was it, his spirit, his dignity,
his thoroughbred body? No, it was the conjunction of these and the very
thought, this summary, increased my sense of loss. He was warmth,
impulse, reason for living. Words! And he was more than words!
By now the dot had disappeared and against the clouds, birds wheeled
and drifted and scattered raindrops fell, scenting the air. I went out
and let them wet my face and take away the sting and then closed the
shutters of my room and lay down.
Rain has such music.
I let it lull me to sleep, sleep, in the morning, warm, in my bed, a
day or a year...sleep...was it from the depth of the sea?
That night a storm engulfed us, ransacking our trees, banging our
shutters, moaning over the roof until Atthis got into bed with me,
thoroughly scared.
“Don’t be afraid, darling.”