After, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1887                                

   

We’d wandered that night, imbibing, dancing Satyrs, rapping

tambourines—singing exultations unto Bacchus, waking dream, the

maenad we were. But with our revels, and with darkness shadowed

deep by cloud, by forest bough, we tumbled into a village, Amphissa,

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we would learn, into a plaza it seemed, and there, palm heels bruised,

fingers raw, feet worn sore, and still in garland, and chiton—clingy and

sheer as was our fashion—we spread our wraps, fell asleep. Come

morning, we found we’d slept in a market—Calacatta marble, hempen

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shades, dawnlight freshing cumquat, grape, great dripping

honeycombs—amazed we’d not awakened disheveled, disarrayed. But

rather, our demeanors composed, and smart, as if we’d readied

ourselves—and we could not believe it—for the passel of women

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waiting there, they must have been, since cockcrow, women dressed in

their own rich fashions of garment and tress, Amphissa women, whose

husbands, they said, now battled our countrymen at Delphi. But these

women had tidied us, smoothed our clothes, and as we awoke, led us

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to basins, lathers of soft white clay, washed our hair with rock rose,

with spikenard, rinsed us with clean, fresh water, kneaded our skin with

hyacinth, lily, yellow narcissus. We joined together that morning, even

those women who, and we could see it, imagined us disgusting,

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wanting, dangerous, but still they broke our fast, serving barley bread,

fig, honey, thick, sweet yogurt. We told them our names, and they

theirs, in accents pleasing to us, but as we helped with bowls and cups,

a runner came—sweating, fraught—the women consulting. You must

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leave, they said, now, quickly—battles approach, men return—his

message. But they would, and do not worry, lead us back to Phocis, to

our forests and streams. We departed, four walking with us—Koré, of

blue-black scarf and stole, Metis, of bobbened-wise graying hair who’d

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served us wine for our waking, Molpadia, of frail-green gown who’d

presented us salvers of quince and pear, Timandra, who had bowed

before us to learn our needs. On paths then, far from Amphissa, and

safe, they queried our fashions of dance and song and drum and would

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we show them. So we sang our paeans, our hymns—fa’s, issas,

Ahms—and danced, and soon they gamboled with us, and when we

arrived in our homeland, asked if they might stay—to learn our voice

and rhyme, our steps and parade. Certainly, we said, and we from you.

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We sewed them garments for the freshness of air and lilt, wove sandals-

to-match for the soft, pearly forest floor. And shared together dreams

of dignity, kindness, peace, though to what peace we could not know,

what with gods, men, the always, always of war.