"He has been my enemy all the time, Libus."

We sat on his veranda, an agnus-castus sheltering us from the wind.

His boy brought us drinks.

"Are we better friends?" he asked.

"I trust you more."

Tree shadows moved across his mouth and chin.

"Trust is not always friendship. I shouldn't have informed. How shallow we are, the best of us. We bungle. Friendship, yours and mine, it's hard to measure, perhaps we shouldn't try: isn't it better left alone? Friendship, that's what we've had all these years...I overstepped propriety."

How pale Libus was, in his grey robe, shadows ridging the fabric, chalking his face, thickening his lips, greying his hair. His sandals moved nervously yet he never moved his hands: they remained weighted to his lap.

I ate supper there, lingering with the ancientness of his rooms, dark mosaics, the crowning of a king behind him, Libus' chair of white leather, the king in the mosaic studying his crown, his jewels flashing red, a hint of Corinth and a hint of Crete.

Remembering my shepherd visit, I wrote this:

EVENING STAR

Hesperus, you bring

Homeward all that

Dawn's light disperses,

Bring home sheep,

Bring home goats,

Bring children home

To their mothers.

What is it urges the mind to seek beauty? What is the challenge? Why go where there are no charts?

Beauty says it is a kind of love.

So, I make love, in my quiet room, the word symbolic of man, life's continuity, my paper taken from reeds and trees. I write of birth, love, marriage and death, sensing that the unrecorded is vaster than the recorded. I sense the stumbling: the past could be a gigantic storm, fog obliterating at moment of revelation, fog fumbling from man to man, saying come, saying stop. The past is a wave through which no swimmer passes. As surf it inundates, then vanishes. On windy nights, it moans at my window, beautiful and hideous. I struggle on.

I quote from my journal kept in exile:

For three days we have had little to eat, days of quarrels, bitterness and savagery.

I gave myself to a merchant and he has returned the favor by feeding Alcaeus and me. We ate in the kitchen, glad to find considerate slaves. We can remain long enough to recover our strength, if not our hopes.

How I long for home and my servants, fish as Exekias can prepare it, onions in Chian wine, olives from Patmos. It helps to list the good things. Surely they are not lost.

How wretched to cheat myself to keep alive, to cheat the face, the mooning eyes, the stupid mouth, the odor of flagrancy, the disbelief...chattel, cringe, lie still, perform.

Copying those lines I remembered things I have never recorded, our filthy clothes, windowless room, flies, thirst, sickness...Alcaeus in jail... I was fined...authorities jeered at us...no sympathy, no luck until Aesop, his fox, raven and rooster.

I never thought him brilliant but he was always entertaining, agreeable about the smallest problem. Nuances come to me, as he told of a turtle that ferried a small turtle and then, at the end of the pleasant ride, said:

"Little turtle, you must pay."

"How can I pay?" asked the little turtle.

"By doing me a favor."

"Well, what can I do?"

"Hump along the beach and snatch me a fly."

"I'll do my best," said the little turtle.

After humping and snapping till almost noon, the little turtle brought a fly to the big turtle. Finding the big fellow asleep, the little one had to cuff him.

"Here," said the turtle, between closed lips.

"Ah," exclaimed the big turtle, swallowing the fly, tasting it with care. "Umm, that's the first fly I ever ate! You see a little fellow like you can do things a big fellow can't."

During the night an earthquake woke me and I wandered through the bedrooms, to see about my girls. Atthis needed covering and as I arranged her covers she murmured, "Mama, mama." Before I could slip away, she grasped my hand.

"Are you homesick, darling?"

When I kissed her, I found her face wet with tears. "Why don't you go home for a few weeks?" I whispered. "You were calling your mama in your sleep. If you're homesick, you must go home. Let's talk about it tomorrow. Do you want me to sleep with you?"

So we cuddled together and almost at once she relaxed and, after a few endearments, slept with her head on my shoulder, her violet fragrance around me. I held her fingers a long time. Drowsily, I asked: where do we go...why can't we remain young...happy? The last thing I recalled was the sweetness of her perfume.