Voices from the Past Part 22

"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. Some- thing hurt in me. Wasn't I deluding him? Was there freedom? When he stum- bled, 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 san- dal, 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 gra.s.s. I noticed my own. It seemed another's hand.

The gra.s.s altered its ident.i.ty. 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, pre- paratory 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, afraid the bees might sting them. The wall's shadow had lengthened and birds were quarreling. Sum- mer'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 G.o.ddesses..."