Voices from the Past Part 29

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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.surance.

"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 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 pa.s.sed 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 oak.u.m, 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, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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,