What can a cricket know about god?"

That's what man says, unable to see beyond his own clod. He scoffs and sneers but what is he but a two-legged cricket, brown, yellow or black? I'm sure the cricket has his illusions, some of them as pat as ours.

Charaxos has returned to Mytilene.

Our meeting was unavoidable, of course. He had on the commonplace mask of the man in the street and talked about his trip, the grinding poverty in Egypt, the bad state of our mercenaries there...

No mention of settling his debts! Not a word about Rhodopis!

Evidently Kleis does not exist.

"All of us are well, thank you," I said. "Nothing has changed for us here."

What is there between us? It is something deeper than ourselves. When I walked away, my eyes burned and my cheeks felt hot.

Here is a passage from my first journal, written in childish hand:

Today is my birthday and mother gave me earrings and papa gave me a brooch with a carnelian stone. We had a party on the beach and papa burnt his fingers in the fire as we cooked the mutton meat. I don't like mutton meat. I don't like smoky fires. Papa sings badly. My dog got sick.

I suppose all that was very important to me.

Is our life important to anyone else?

No word from Aesop.

Sometimes I have to get away from everything and everyone, myself as well.

I went to a nearby fishing village. Necessity can be ingenious. The fishermen have managed to build good boats out of the battered wrecks that littered our shores. They tell me that the exporting of sponges has become extensive.

I wish I could sail with a sponge crew. I went with a crew once.

Glued inside my decorum, I can't believe I was free...wild...bold...headstrong...long ago.

Yes, I would like to cruise into deep blue water and stare down, then to the sponge shallows and swim down, down.

My new book is ready.

It was interesting to visit the Kamen house and check the copies.

I stopped for a moment in the alley to gaze at the sun symbol painted over the house door. More and more, geometric designs are giving way to more plastic ideas in decorating. Polychrome painting seems to grow more imaginative. Our ceramics are becoming more forceful. I thought of these things as I looked at the sun symbol, done in blue and gold.

The Kamen brothers were, as always, mysterious, stiff, like Egyptian clay long dried by the sun. It is too bad they can't apply some of their art to themselves. They are such emaciated creatures, I wonder what they eat?

Each waits for the other to speak; each scrapes, bows, tries to efface himself. Tall, nut brown, with hair tied behind their necks, deer skin aprons over faded clothes, they make me feel like an intruder.

As for my book, it is excellently made. The brothers are perfectionists in their craft. To them, poetry is nothing. Do they read it at all? However, the libraries will be pleased to receive these copies.

I am sure this is my best work.

Thousands of white herons flew over our island this morning, making the sky a sky of motion. They flew almost all morning, flying toward the mainland. I watched them from a bridge in town, leaning against the cool stone rail, Anaktoria watching with me, perplexed. Not a bird faltered. What directed them? Not a sound, as they flew. Some of the townsmen gathered to stare, dead silent. In tens and twenties, they flew over and onward, apparently at the same speed. Twice the flocks covered the sun and our town darkened, tiled roofs turning grey.

There were murmurs...

I remembered the herons as I tried to rest, wings and more wings, bearing me away.

Sometimes, we troop to our old theatre, lost in its bowl of cypress and overgrown with grass and weeds, seats and benches crumbled. Laying aside our clothes, we toss rover reeds, have a try at archery, play catch. Or we race or go in for leap-frog or tug-of-war.

Little boys like to pester us and poke fun. Little boys-how delightful they can be.

If the day is sultry, we loll. Usually, the complaint is "too much sun." I used to think we needed lots of sun and exercise but now I'm not sure.

Lying on a moss-topped stone, time seemed to pause: I think there is trouble brewing. I don't put it past Rhodopis to concoct something.

Even Kleis has been too alarmed to return to Charaxos' house. Mallia has told her to wait.

There has been a to-do because the "right" people did not attend the homecoming party for Charaxos. What a pity! I know of no changes in the life of Mytilene that required a unanimous celebration.

"Why must there be bad feelings between their house and ours?" Kleis has asked. "Of course I hate him for what he did to me."

My knees trembled.

How explain life to one who has not lived it!

"You could help me, if you wanted to," she said.

Just like that!

I believe we only know what life gives us: can sound be described to the deaf?

"After all, Charaxos is your brother," she reminded me.

I wanted to say: He was, before all, not after all.

I can barely check my anger, angers, one on top the other, too many for me to consider and come through sane.

As I went home, I saw a man beating his slave. The slave, who has had everything taken from him, is being punished publicly for an insignificant theft!