Voices from the Past

  “This is how I beat off his genitals...”

  Alcaeus roared, hand on his beard.

  “I beat open his helmet...”

  Yes, the war...

  And in my room, I found relief listening to the wind,remembering the boat’s passage to Limnos, my friendsthere, the festival in the vineyard, flute and drum,carom of bodies, laughter: Was it Felerian who laughedthat low pitched melodious laugh? Was it Marcus whohurled his spear through the target? I erased Alcaeus: somuch of life demands voluntary forgetfulness!

  My girls had clambered about me at the dock, detainingme. Why does their love soften me? So often there arepetty squabbles but, at reunions, they dissolve: themoment becomes a moment of accord, making life worthier:Gyrinno insists on carrying my basket, another smooths myscarf, another offers flowers. Kisses. They buzz into aflurry of plans.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll go up the mountain...”

  “Tomorrow, we’ll...”

  Ah-hah-who, ah hah-who, the quails cry, as night comes.

  I light mama’s lamp, so smooth to the fingers after allthese years, like alabaster. The wick struggles intoflame, as if reluctant to leave the past.

  My Etruscan wall girl comes alive.

  “Ah-hah-who.”

  I take off my chain and pearl cluster and lay them intheir scented box, pausing, sensing, dreaming.

  Perhaps Phaon will be back soon—unexpectedly. I couldnot remain longer in Limnos, thinking he might return—tonight. I long for his mouth, the jerk of his legs, hisobelisko’s tyranny.

  Hunger—let me sleep tonight, tired after the voyage.

  ?

  No sooner have I returned than I am upset. Life isconstricted... I stand among Charaxos’ Egyptiantreasures, confronting him: a twisted, gilded serpent godsneers at me: fragments of gold leaf blink: mellow goldis underfoot: I sway, as I talk, my parasol clenchedacross my belly.

  “Now, I know,” I say to him.

  “You know what?”

  “That you schemed with Pittakos, to have me exiled,with Alcaeus.”

  “What?”

  “After all these years I’ve found out. Stop lying. Youtried to get our home, that’s why you wanted me exiled.What a brother you’ve been! What a fool I’ve been!”

  For once he shut his mouth.

  “During the war years you made many trips, to sell yourwines...refusing to help me financially...yours is a debtyou won’t pay...and you don’t care. I’ve dedicated mylife to writing...I live no lie. I work to make lifesignificant.

  “And now, why have I come? To quarrel? No, to tell youthe truth. I’ve nothing more to say. I want you to knowthat I know. It’s a satisfaction...”

  I could have talked on, but I left, snapping open myparasol, clutching Ezekias’ arm, walking swiftly, curbingmy pulse, hearing a seagull, the wind icy at the cornersof the town, dogs sleeping in the sun, carts passing.

  I tried to believe something was settled, that life wasworth more for having told the truth. Yet, I wanted toreturn to Charaxos, demand apologies and restitution,apologies for impertinent, biased criticisms, as ifapology, like a brand, could stamp out wrong, as if therewere restitution for my cheated years.

  Somehow, as I walked, as Ezekias chattered, Aesopcommiserated: his hunchback shoulders squared myshoulders: his doll had the dignity of a scepter to prodmy spirit.

  A tow-headed youth greeted us and I thought: I wish Icould have a son. Yes, to give birth again. That glorycancels many defeats.

  In Libus’ house, I turned to him and said:

  “I told Charaxos what you told me weeks ago.”

  “But I shouldn’t have told you, Sappho.”

  “It was time I knew the truth.”

  “And now you have an enemy,” he said.

  “He has been my enemy all the time, Libus.”

  We sat on his veranda, an agnus-castus sheltering usfrom the wind. His boy brought us drinks.

  “Are we better friends?” he asked.

  “I trust you more.”

  Tree shadows moved across his mouth and chin.

  “Trust is not always friendship. I shouldn’t haveinformed. How shallow we are, the best of us. We bungle.Friendship, yours and mine, it’s hard to measure, perhapswe shouldn’t try: isn’t it better left alone? Friendship,that’s what we’ve had all these years...I oversteppedpropriety.”

  How pale Libus was, in his grey robe, shadows ridgingthe fabric, chalking his face, thickening his lips,greying his hair. His sandals moved nervously yet henever moved his hands: they remained weighted to his lap.

  I ate supper there, lingering with the ancientness ofhis rooms, dark mosaics, the crowning of a king behindhim, Libus’ chair of white leather, the king in themosaic studying his crown, his jewels flashing red, ahint of Corinth and a hint of Crete.

  ?

  Remembering my shepherd visit, I wrote this:

  EVENING STAR

  Hesperus, you bring

  Homeward all that

  Dawn’s light disperses,

  Bring home sheep,

  Bring home goats,

  Bring children home

  To their mothers.

  ?

  What is it urges the mind to seek beauty? What is thechallenge? Why go where there are no charts?

  Beauty says it is a kind of love.

  So, I make love, in my quiet room, the word symbolic ofman, life’s continuity, my paper taken from reeds andtrees. I write of birth, love, marriage and death,sensing that the unrecorded is vaster than the recorded.I sense the stumbling: the past could be a giganticstorm, fog obliterating at moment of revelation, fogfumbling from man to man, saying come, saying stop. Thepast is a wave through which no swimmer passes. As surfit inundates, then vanishes. On windy nights, it moans atmy window, beautiful and hideous. I struggle on.

  ?

  I quote from my journal kept in exile:

  For three days we have had little to eat,days of quarrels, bitterness and savagery.

  I gave myself to a merchant and he hasreturned the favor by feeding Alcaeus and me.We ate in the kitchen, glad to findconsiderate slaves. We can remain long enoughto recover our strength, if not our hopes.

  How I long for home and my servants, fishas Exekias can prepare it, onions in Chianwine, olives from Patmos. It helps to listthe good things. Surely they are not lost.

  How wretched to cheat myself to keep alive,to cheat the face, the mooning eyes, thestupid mouth, the odor of flagrancy, thedisbelief...chattel, cringe, lie still,perform.

  Copying those lines I remembered things I have neverrecorded, our filthy clothes, windowless room, flies,thirst, sickness...Alcaeus in jail... I wasfined...authorities jeered at us...no sympathy, no luckuntil Aesop, his fox, raven and rooster.

  I never thought him brilliant but he was alwaysentertaining, agreeable about the smallest problem.Nuances come to me, as he told of a turtle that ferried asmall turtle and then, at the end of the pleasant ride,said:

  “Little turtle, you must pay.”

  “How can I pay?” asked the little turtle.

  “By doing me a favor.”

  “Well, what can I do?”

  “Hump along the beach and snatch me a fly.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said the little turtle.

  After humping and snapping till almost noon, the littleturtle brought a fly to the big turtle. Finding the bigfellow asleep, the little one had to cuff him.

  “Here,” said the turtle, between closed lips.

  “Ah,” exclaimed the big turtle, swallowing the fly,tasting it with care. “Umm, that’s the first fly I everate! You see a little fellow like you can do things a bigfellow can’t.”

  ?

  During the night an earthquake woke me and I wanderedthrough the bedrooms, to see about my girls. Atthisneeded covering and as I arranged her covers shemurmured, “Mama, mama
.” Before I could slip away, shegrasped my hand.

  “Are you homesick, darling?”

  When I kissed her, I found her face wet with tears.“Why don’t you go home for a few weeks?” I whispered.“You were calling your mama in your sleep. If you’rehomesick, you must go home. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.Do you want me to sleep with you?”

  So we cuddled together and almost at once she relaxedand, after a few endearments, slept with her head on myshoulder, her violet fragrance around me. I held herfingers a long time. Drowsily, I asked: where do wego...why can’t we remain young...happy? The last thing Irecalled was the sweetness of her perfume.

  The earthquake had been forgotten.

  ?

  Alcaeus sat on his leather stool, his dog at his feet,sunlight behind him; elbows on his knees, he said:

  “...I prefer that hymn. There’s really no finer. Inspite of time it’s full of force, spring’s arrival, thebrevity of summer, the dying year. It has the shepherd’spower, the forest’s—passion tamed and sanctified. Anotherone I like is...

  The woods decay, the woods decay and fall...

  Libus, sitting near Alcaeus, quoted his favorite,huddling in his robe, his face averted:

  Alone, in sea-circled Delos, while round onbeach and cove,

  before the piping sea wind the dark bluestorm waves drove...

  “Why do you break off?” I asked.

  He did not answer but said:

  “They knew, those ancients, how to supplicate thelowliest...they preferred the virginal...snowypeaks...whispering groves...the hunting cry...”

  Warming my feet on a warming stone, I said I preferredthe golden hymn and repeated fragments...

  Long are their ways of living, honey in theirbread,

  and in their dances their footsteps twirl,twirling light...

  ?

  Fragment of talk:

  “We can’t marry, unless we have a child...you’ll betwenty-three soon...it must be like that...my house is ahouse of women...”

  I thought of those words as I passed Phaon’s house,beyond the wharf, isolated. As I passed, waves climbedits base, licking at boulders. Its walls are thicker thanmost, cracked and mottled. I used to be afraid of thathouse as a girl and as I passed these thoughts broughtback some of that apprehension. I glanced at the seawardbalcony, tottering on wasted beams, painted years ago.Seagulls squatted on the flat roof, as they have day inand day out. There are five rooms underneath those tilesand his mother and uncle lived and died there, a harshstruggle in rooms of simple furnishings, coils of rope,nets, brass fittings and bronze anchors.

  Phaon lives there with two men, their servants and ahanger-on. Kleis visits occasionally. A parrot, some saynearly two hundred years old, gabbles sayings and fillsthe sea-sopped silences.

  Yes, his house troubles me—its darkness, its evocationof poverty and my own exile.

  ?

  While I was ill, Libus cared for me, the mastery of hishands relieving pain. By my bed, talking soothing talk,he brought gradual relief, just as two years ago. Hishands are more than hands, it seems. Magical masseur, heexplores yet never gropes: his fingers, padded at thetips, press, release, wait. Our friendship, with all itsconfidences, in spite of differences, weathers the yearsand is stronger at such a time, under his mastery. As heobliterates pain, he blinks absently or smiles his palesmile, withdrawn yet assuring. He learned his art from ayoung Alexandrian, a man he met while studying in Athens,who spoke many desert languages.

  “I’d like to see him again. I’ve learned somethingthrough my own experiments; we would share. Of course,he’s a great man.”

  And when I asked Libus about my illness, he said:

  “Too much work, too much rich food, too much concern.You haven’t been using common sense.”

  I didn’t care for this and said:

  “I know from what Alcaeus says, you help him more thananyone. You can help me.”

  “I’m not able to help him all the time.”

  “You mean his drinking?”

  He shrugged.

  “Let’s call it something else. He does nothing so muchof the time. That’s where the trouble lies. He’s notthinking...doesn’t care.”

  “He wouldn’t let me in when I went last. Thasos had toturn me away.”

  “The great soldier...drunk.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Try again, Sappho. You and I know what he is—and was.You used to understand him better than anyone. Now, well,I do what I can. He’s growing worse...have you heard himbellow at me or Thasos, as if he were commanding officer?No doubt you have...and more...”

  Libus’ hands pushed and then, feather-weight, strokedupward, over and over, inducing me to breathe steadily:his hands brought warmth, my thinking became clearer. Ashe pressed, the weight on my heart lessened; as hisfingers covered my stomach, rotating their tips, I feltbitter anguish might not come again.

  Lecturing me, he cautioned me about food and advisedless exercise: rest, let the days flow by.

  So, I sail with my girls, lie in the sun, walk, pokealong lazy trails, fuss in my garden. Winter is hard onme. Chills come, leaving my stomach knotted, my eyesafire.

  ?

  Phaon has returned.

  ?

 

  Phaon and Sappho kneel in a grove,

  a cithara beside them:

  age-old trees shade the lovers:

  the age of a ruined temple is part of

  the timelessness of the grove:

  bronze Phaon and white Sappho,

  dusk takes over their whispers,

  their motions, the wind in the olives.

  Mytilene

  U

  nder the olive trees we faced each other, alone, the suncoloring the ground, patching yellow and brown. Abutterfly circled, as if considering us. Tenderly, Phaonfitted his hands over my breasts and I held him in myarms; swaying, we kissed: we had not talked much and weknew talk could come later: his legs crowded mine: hishand undid my hair, spilling it over my shoulders:confirmation was in that undisturbed place and accordburned our mouths and throats. Encystment was theslipping down of robes, our knees touching, the feeling,self, and underneath self, the ground, our earth: yet wewere not aware, only before and later: the consummationdragged at the trees: I forced him to me, forcing backhis face, his mouth: how warm his stamina: tenderly, werose, to fall back: tenderness, how it becomes ash,taking us by surprise: I couldn’t stop quivering till hishands stopped me: his voice was real so all was real:then, he was home and this was not a lie: I knew it onthe slope of hills sloping to the ocean: I knew it in theboat, far at sea.

  ?

  When we learned of a terrible earthquake at Chios, weloaded Libus’ boat with food, wine and water and set out,before dawn, across choppy water, Phaon and I at thestern, under blankets, Libus managing the sail. We werepart of a small fleet but I couldn’t discern anotherboat. Spray swished overhead and fog, ahead and astern,seemed ready to pincer us. Under our hull the waterflooded ominously; the sky, without its stars, might havebeen the ocean.

  Our hard trip brought us into Chios tired and hungry;we had been unable to look after ourselves but, withouteating, we began to distribute food and wine.

  Chios—happy town—lay broken. I walked about,remembering, stopping here and there: all the centralpart, shops and temple, were dismembered, had windy dustblowing across it, greyish dust that seemed mortuary.Yet, I saw no dead, only the injured: Libus helped them,bandaging, talking: I gave wine and water, afraid: he wasannoyed by my fear: I could not find Phaon and that wor-ried me. Wine, and water, dribbling them, my hampershaking, the wind icy and dust in my mouth, I felt sickagain. A child raced to me, wailing: crouching down, Imothered her, fed her a little bread: as we crouched, aslab of building fell, tottered forward and disappearedin a wave of dust.

  “The quake came and came and then came again,” aninjured woman said, accep
ting dates and cheese.

  By now, I saw others from Mytilene and their heartyfaces cheered me. But how the gulls screamed. Flockswheeled and screamed.

  On the beach we lit fires and cooked our suppers, windand dust still bothering us: Phaon and I ate with peoplefrom home, our fire put together from the prow of an oldboat, the talk about Chios and the injured, their lack offood and care. We slept in beached boats, the surfsnarling, stars breaking through fast clouds: Iremembered the big dipper and frightened people... Libuswoke us early and we did our best to help, using splints,caring for a head wound, bandaging a boy’s chest... Libusscarcely allowed himself time to eat.