Voices from the Past Part 2

SAPPHO'S JOURNAL

Sappho, walking on her island beach,

pauses by a broken amphora:

With one foot, she nudges the terra cotta and black jar,

its painted chariot, charioteer and horses:

The charioteer wears a laurel wreath.

Sappho, about 30 years old,

her hair braided around her head,

naked, sandaled, saunters along the Mediterranean,

gulls and pelicans flying, surf and gull sounds in early morning yellow.

Villa Poseidon, Mytilene

642 B.C.

T

he great storm beats across the island, rattling the olive and the cypress, piling the surf on the beach, hissing the rain across my roof. It is cold and the light of my terra cotta lamp is cold. Some say that a storm will wash away our island, but I do not believe it. Our island will be here long after I have gone, and so will our town, my dear Mytilene, so wrong, so right.

Alcaeus would revel in this gale and go out in it and let the rain lash him and then he would come and take me in his arms.

The storm will rage all night and the gutters spew, and I will rage at my solitude, a solitude that grows and grows.

Growl on, spew on, beat and tramp-tomorrow's sun will return and the sea's eye will glitter and I will gaze across the bay-and Alcaeus will not be here.

My feet are cold and the lamp is weak and the wax hard, and I must go to bed.

Yesterday, the wine workers gathered at a nearby vineyard, old men and girls, in tattered clothes, some lazy, some hard-working, pressing the grapes, many of them my friends. Spade-bearded Niko directed the pressing, sitting at the base of an oak, wearing a stained robe, his voice low. Women carried hampers of grapes loaded with purple cl.u.s.ters, the women's skirts wet with dew, the grapes mottled with damp. Clouds made the day cool. Someone toyed with a flute, the men treading, emptying husks over sandy soil, now and then pausing to talk under the oak, the circular press letting out its red, everyone tasting. Many amphorae were broken, before they were finally filled and capped.

I wanted to help. How sweet the smell flooding my nose.

Atthis has been my girl-child today and we have strolled together up the long, long path to the outcrop, beyond the temple. Atthis and tall white marble columns, with their busy apricot-breasted swallows, have a.s.suaged my loneliness. How lonely we become, as we grow older, even when there is someone to share. The key to self gets lost; self-a.s.surance diminishes. Once, it was only necessary to dash around the garden or throw back one's head and laugh...

Yellow-headed Atthis, lazy-eyed, sitting on the steps of the temple ruin, wove a flower wreath for me and I wove one for her. Then, returning home, we bathed at our fountain, splas.h.i.+ng each other, the sun on us and the slippery marble. Afterwards, we lay down and slept, and I dreamed of a s.h.i.+p at sea, her mast broken, her tangled sail and rigging dragging.

Will the war never end?