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,​ 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​ 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​ 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​ 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,​ 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​ 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​ 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​ 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.​

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.