Voices from the Past Part 4

"The G.o.ds held me in Egypt, longing to sail for home, for I had failed to seek their blessing with an offering..."

His voice had not changed, I realized with a start.

Surcharged with new meaning, it entered my being, as he went on about the galleys and the old men "deep in the sea's abyss."

The phrase haunted me because it was he who lived in an abyss.

As days pa.s.sed, defeat was all that we heard in our town, not outright defeat, but capitulation-retreat combined with truce, truce necessitated by deception. Or was it confusion? The soldiers I met, after their drunken reunions, spoke of the war with bitterness. Ten years, they said. Ten years, for what? And how many of us came back? Those who had been away longest considered themselves outcasts and those who had returned during the war complained, unable to recognize their families.

Standing on the wharf, I familiarized myself with the fleet, its remnants, anch.o.r.ed forlornly in the bay, boys swimming around the hulls, the decks bone dry, hawsers trailing, a door off its hinges, the cordage so rotten a gull might topple a spar. Disgust in my mouth, I tasted the waste of life, Alcaeus', my own, my friends'.

What is life for, but love?

And love sent Atthis and me along the beach, stretching our legs, running, das.h.i.+ng in and out of shallows, finding periwinkles, the day even-tempered, goats nibbling at wild celery, their bells lazy, a fisherman waving at us as he cast his net, clouds over the mountain. I noticed Atthis against the luminous water, her fragile face trusting life. Her yellow ringlets in my lap, she sang to me and then, eyes shut, fingers in the sand, she seemed to steal away.

"What are you thinking about, darling?"

"You..."

"What about?"

"You and Alcaeus-you are so troubled for him."

"Then you have seen him?"

"Yesterday. And I'm afraid."

"Why?"

"Because what is there left for him-and you?"

"I can't answer you, Atthis. Time answers such questions."

I sense my old loneliness, a loneliness that was distorted like a s.h.i.+p's rib, tossed on the beach, warped because of bad luck.

"His arms have been injured, too," Atthis said.

"They will get better, in time..." And I heard time in the receding wave and felt it in her ringlets and in her hands.

"You're so sweet," she said and I saw myself mirrored in her eyes. And it occurred to me that Alcaeus and I would never again be able to exchange notes, those hasty, affectionate scribbles. Would he ever again dictate his bawdy poems, lampoon dictators and brag about war? Had pen and desk become his enemies?

Many things occurred to me, there on the sand, as Atthis and I talked softly.

Sappho's garden, terraces of roses, shrubbery and cypress,

has the ocean below: moonlit, she stands white-robed

close to marble statuary:

a nude Hermes, a bust of Aphrodite,

a niobe, an athlete from Delphi.

Sappho sits down on a bench and fingers a lyre.

Mytilene

T

onight, I have returned to my poetry, for the solace and sound of my pen. Here in my library, time will be defeated for a moment, at least. The sun's last rays stream in, so yellow, they might be made of acacia. The cooling light covers my desk and bookshelves and relinquishes its hold of my vase. A fragment clings to the amphora Alcaeus gave me long ago. Its dancing, singing men seem somehow out of focus; yet it seems I hear the flute and lyre of the ceramic players.

I dreamed I talked with Cyprus-born...

No, that is a poor line.

Maybe this is a better theme for tonight: