The wind had subsided, and I felt less fear and wentabout with my basket of food and wine. In the afternoon,we welcomed other boats from Lesbos and after a secondnight on the beach—this one calm, all the stars awake—wesailed for home, three of us leaving at the same time,our boats so many grey corks on a line.
As I stared back at the stricken town, I heard thegulls. “Phaon, it was bad,” I said.
“Yes, very bad, though I’ve seen worse.”
“I hope I never do.”
“These people had help...sometimes there is nobody tohelp.”
“We’re in the lead,” Libus cried. “We’ll be the firstones home. Now for some sleep.”
(
Today, I had a letter from Solon: he discussed politics and his immediate in-tentions and then went on to consider my poetry, praising it for its lyrical quality,refreshing themes, compassion and sense of beauty.
I respect his judgment and his quotations sent me to my books, to reconsiderand evaluate. For a while, I sat at my desk, thinking over passages, contemplatingthe ocean, serenely blue as usual. Life, for the moment, was balanced: it hadacquired profundity and calm: here was my reward since I believed his assess-ments just: for once, I needed no one to share: I needed nothing.
But I picked up Aesop’s clay fox and recognized my need: the bite of yester-day cornered me.
(
Kleis has fallen in love—this time with a cousin of Pittakos. I am amused,and have done all I dare to make the pair happy, picnicking and boating.
I have seen him at play on the field, built well, long of leg, with a homely,genial face and grin that consistently makes up for mediocrity. Like his cousin, Icould add. But that’s unfair. When I see him screw up his mouth in front ofKleis, I sag. The next moment he brightens and seems about to say somethingintelligent. Then, the cycle resumes. Love, I remind myself, with inward nod, canbe curious.
Well, I am playing the game—if it is a game—circumspectly, knowing windscan 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 hergolden 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 forridicule: where is another daughter, where is the boy suited to your taste? Is sheto fall in love your way? Deeper, I discern the sacredness of life, elements offaith and love.
Thinking these things, I go where the hills plunge to the bay: I listen, undermy 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 ofman, blundering, a plant in his hand, a rope dragging behind him, a dog by hisside: what is the rope for?
I think of my school and how taxing it is to teach kindness, moderation andbeauty: yet, I am confident, teaching is worth while and living worth while: goodmeals, laughter, music, dancing, love: they are there with him and his dog and therope, 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 hulldipping, 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 personalrecollections have pulled out of ruts. I have uncovered uniqueness, sensibility... Ihave 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 sensedthat appalling black that existed before the coming of books. I have heard tornsail 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 faceturned toward the sun, his enigma personal, his serpent’s head prowling througha 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 wereknocking olives off the trees...we walked far.
That is all I wrote and yet that was one of the most joyous days. What keptme from describing our happiness? Was I too close to it? Or was the next dayone 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 andeverything we saw and did. I realize this now. His arms were around me, or minecurled about his waist. His mouth went to mine, many times. Mine to his. I wishI could remember what we said but I remember his smiles and I remember hiscoarse 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...Iglimpse 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 aftera windy night, a dragonfly in my room, clicking its wingsover my bed. Mama saw it and murmured:
“There...see it above you. Now, I know you’ll have agirl!”
Shortly afterward, Kleis was born, the dragonfly stillthere: how blurred, it seemed, and how the ocean fadedand reappeared as I fought. I felt I would drown insweat, drops pouring down my neck. Mama wiped my face andhands, her voice soothing, as she cooled me. I wasn’tafraid: no, a new happiness surged through me, even whilemy wrists were breaking and my knees afire. Even whilethe pain tore me, I was aware of this happiness: I wasbringing life, defeating death, adding to our world. Myheart sang, though sweat drenched me, and the dragonfly,clicking its green wings, seemed a ragged dot or greatbird.
I was glad Cercolas wasn’t there: I tried to rememberhis love-making but all I could remember was pain andmother’s voice and the chatter of Exekias and the soundof the sea. When Kleis had come, I thought: my wrists arebroken and my knees burn but I’m glad, glad...and motherkissed me and said: Go to sleep, darling.
When I woke, the top of the ocean had become pink andpink webbed the sky: it seemed I was staring throughwoven stuff, skeins in rows, with wool dropped andtumbled between: the pink darkened nearest the water andstars were visible—a sunset like many others and yetdifferent because Kleis was here: this was her firstsunset.
?
During exile, when Alcaeus and I had the same room andbed, he tried to make me feel our bad luck couldn’t last.He would roar against it. He might begin the bleakest daywith a song.
“Hungry—let’s go beg!
“Thirsty—let’s find a fountain. There’s cool water inthe shade of a carob.”
Our feet grew blistered. Days I lay on my mat, too sickto 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 sidespainted with flowers, Alcaeus cheered, reminding me ofour luck.
“Remember those candle stubs I found?” he laughed.“Remember the roast lamb I stole—how the guy rushed afterme, jabbing the air with a knife. Remember...”
I remember my gratitude to Alcaeus and Aesop must notend. Without their help I would have died.
I dreamed the o
ther night that Alcaeus and I wereexiled again, that Alcaeus came to me, as I lay betweenheaps of dung: he crawled toward me, clothes in rags,exhausted, blind. I opened my cloak and offered mybreast—wanting to suckle him.
Waking, I realized how late it was.
?
Four of us, with Libus as guest, had supper at a tableon the porch, a reception to honor Anaktoria’sreturn...bourekakia and stuffed grape leaves, Anaktoriaserving, maturer with that overnight bloom, thatovernight assurance.
“Do you like bourekakia?” she asked Libus, tooobviously thinking of him, offering him stuffed leavesinstead of bourekakia, offering herself, at least for the night, somethingin that spirit, making fun of Telesippa, her newcomer rival, who was alsointerested in Libus, diverted, momentarily by someone’s comment about myharp, a point to bandy for effect: how charming they were, bathed andperfumed, Telesippa in her city clothes, Anaktoria in her Cretan style, Gyrinno’sjewels 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 oneelse would have such an opportunity to influence them.
We listened while Anaktoria described her visit, her baby sister, the sailorwho died on the wharf, the arrival of an Ethiopian girl, slave for a merchant. Shetalked as I had taught her, gestures well timed, head poised. She has lost herisland 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 Libusjoked, sultry jokes of the last generation, wanting to impress the girls.
Old tiles underfoot...youth around me...the thick walls of my house above thesea... I relaxed until someone mentioned Phaon and I saw him working on hisboat, 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 beburied 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 seehim rock with laughter and splash himself clean.
(
Alone, I rubbed my hands over my body, thighs, breasts, ankles, wrists andshoulders: my flesh is firm: I know, as I sense my own integrity, that before longI must lie in death.
No waking touch on my belly and knees, no chance to comb and dress myhair 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 andthe 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 anddivides into blue. From shore to sky there is blue, in patches like marble, areaslike grey and porous granite, ribbons of blue that submerge in whorls.
How quiet the blue, how serene where afternoon sun polishes a path aimedfor the shore, Cretan, Ethiopian, Etruscan, where men and ships have sailed—their hieroglyphs ruddered by chance. The ocean is always chance, yet it issubdued, finally modulated by place and time. Wherever we travel, there is theelement 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 anddriftwood—beaching itself with footprints that fill with seepage or disappearunderneath the wave.
(
Cercolas and I had such fun, when we were newly married and rode ourwhite 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 untilshe 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. Howcan I know?
Our horses have gone, six or seven at a time, until there are only colts andold ones—I see them on deck and in holds, their white faces peering, yellowmanes shining: white, in memory of our mares, white as gulls. I wish I could heartheir whinnying across the fields, as they race toward me.
Warriors brag about their fearless horses but I prefer mares that nip myhands and tug my clothes.
(
Music is a tree, a cave with sea water sloshing, a shell to the ear, a baby’slaughter, the lover’s “yes.” I suppose it came from the flint, the arrow. Cercolaswas music. Mother was music. The loom and harp are music. I have heard musicin 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, thewind harsh; I like it when I am on the shore, the beach fire low, sparks rising, thesea 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 INSURPRISING WAYS, PRYING, BLURRING—ALTOGETHER DECEITFUL. I LIKE THEHARP BETTER THAN THE HORNS. DRUMS FRIGHTEN. THE VOICE IS BEST: ITSSTORY 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 enoughthen. And Alcaeus was clever enough to wring every drop of satire out of P’sdoings. His foolery endangered many of us. What a disgrace Pittakos remains inoffice. 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 hedies. It’s better to wait. Look at Alcaeus, what has his fight gotten him? Part ofhis tragedy comes from his inability to overthrow this man.”
Yesterday, when I visited Alcaeus, I shivered and pulled back. Alcaeusstepped 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 acrossthe room to bump against a table and chirp a drunken song.
It was rainy and dark and the melancholy afternoon and room closed in. Youmust pretend, I said to myself. Pretend he can see. Pretend there’s nothingwrong...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 tautthroat 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 thancommunication at such a time?
I could not look at him but looked at Libus instead, his ephemeral facegrowing more ephemeral as he continued drinking, wrestling with his doggedsilence.
Drink could not help... I fled home.
(
Mytilene
641
Three soldiers have been washed up on a raft, scarcely alive: all of them weretaken 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. Fordays they had been adrift, paddling, foodless except for fish and birds. I hearfrom Thasos that one of them, not much older than Phaon, throws himselfagainst walls and stalks about babbling to himself, begging for water.