May it be a satisfying freedom.
Mother’s lamp, as I write, is nearly empty: she would have liked the wedding ceremony, the chorus singing my poem: terra-cotta lamp, do you remember her wedding? Did you burn for her ecstasy or were you snuffed out before the groom carried her to bed?
It wasn’t long ago I was married: how I walked, my head high, the embodiment of innocence and grace: I thought life would be easy!
The wind puffs through my room.
The ocean whispers.
P
Charaxos and Rhodopis attended the wedding, staying apart with a group of their friends, no one dressed for the occasion. Since the man who had forcibly made love to her was there, I was disconcerted. I was ashamed. My face burned. What could I do? Would they interfere? But they seemed preoccupied, merely onlookers, most of them young men and women.
When they sauntered away, I enjoyed the wedding.
Someone among them, a stranger perhaps, gazed back at me, reminding me of Cercolas.
Cercolas, my mother, Aesop—each summons a series of images. When each one died, I thought: How can I go on? Now my thought is: What has replaced them? Husband, mother, friend... I am forever altered by their absence, emptier, lonelier. I seek them in others and yet never find them.