HERMAPHRODITE LONGINGS

Only Sappho prepared me Only Sappho of Lesbos, her nipples dry and her Words flowing on the wrinkled parchment Like milk Only Sappho wrote, at the end of her womanhood Wise with the love of both her sexes Dying in Eressos under tyrants Under the potent stars Even in Hades I am with you Andromeda...Gongyla...My desire feeds On your beauty, Gongyla. Each time I see your gown I am made weak and happy...You of all women whom I most desire, come to me again... Sappho, queen of subtexts, knowing She would be burnt in a thousand years By Gregory of Rome...That she would turn Like an old crone's memory, into a flickering Heap of papyrus cinders, ignited by some silly man Only Sappho imagined history as a woman's body... And who but a woman could own a woman's body? Sappho's logic was flawless as her verse. History Did not belong to the bawdy boys...It did not Rest with the emperor hacks who thought they had it Taped. History was a rage of longing, a storm of enduring And history got its own back on the men who mounted it... History takes the shape of a woman and it is a woman Knows best the rounded feel of a womans buttocks How to rub with scented violet, cassia and myrrh The tender insides of those angular elbows...sharp, delicious Tickle of her nails, her Medusa smile...these are women's skills... True histories are histories of women in love. Catullus drinking to Lesbia, had to have Sappho As his model. There was no way out. It was Just the way history staked out a man. Got him. Six hundred years before Catullus Used her, Sappho meditated on this secret...

A man in love must become a woman Before he is done with loving And every poet, Catullus included Enters history through the body of a woman In this rich canal of birth, his nemesis, his aches... Sappho knew well That scored, transvestite passage That politic mixing Of the sexes Then listen, Sappho, to this... A man snatched at me this afternoon He was a woman, his eyes rimmed with Kohl, the veins red with memory. I could not Look at him. My eyes fell... Because it was your face It was your face I saw In the mutilated body, in the coarse Horsewhip tactics of that hijra, scintillating with oils Jasmine, the blouse a gaudy trap, her hand Across me, a sinewy band of teak...I could not Pass...I had to face Your terrible longing, Sappho The centuries have changed. In these three thousand years Even Andromeda, lying so still in her starry bed Has altered her position a little, but this has not Changed...Every man has memories of being a woman And women know that they have been gods At one time or another...Ardhanarishwara Half-woman god...You knew him... Sappho in Indica, crossing boundaries You were him...Ardhanarishwara, enticingly chaste Lover of lovers, you were that divided god... Peerless hermaphrodite, soft as woman's silk Rough as the knuckles of a man...And you are This lewd woman who bars my way... You snatched my purse this afternoon

Admit it. You robbed me of my possessions For which favours I owe you, Sappho... Because you showed me how love strips down How it is the territory of eunuchs and gays Of the women of Lesbos, transvestites Slaves, hermaphrodites, the poxy Apple cheeked seventeenth century brats Playing Artemis and Diana, of the specialist Men of Indica, sinuous narivesham dancers Performing only as women, of housewives Bargirls, of every damned women... And only then of the straight men The fathers and the patrons, the heterosexual Saints...These stand outside the gates of love Only you, Sappho, might have warned the ladies of Eressos Love is a marauder, attacking from the margins It has no great estates, powers, privileges Alley cat of history in a diamond collar, love Survives by stealth, snatching at beauty... Summon, Sappho, your alabaster memories of Atthis You lay in wait behind a laurel tree...You A woman wanderer like me...I barely Heard you, my darling...You came In your trim garments...And suddenly Beauty of your garments! That was love at work. It jumped the petty fences... Crossed the sea of Indica and Attica, it was History swishing into the dream world of Hades... Sappho, this was the catastrophe you feared Hermes came to me in a dream. I said My master, I am altogether lost... And my many riches do not console me I care only...to die...and to watch the dewy lotus Along the banks of Acheron, river of hell... Only you, Sappho, mourned so completely When love died at the bejewelled pontiff's hands... You alone took Kleis, your beloved daughter In your austere arms and did not flinch as you told her...

I have no embroidered head-band for you, Kleis And no idea where to find one While Myrsilos rules in Mytilene...The bright Ribbon reminds me of those days when our Enemies were in exile...O Kleis... Sappho, history comes winding back Persistent as a woman... How you shocked me, Sappho! But I see now why you wore The face of a eunuch this afternoon, held me Captive with your street smart tongue, straining Under a shameless lift of skirts, that sequinned Body to reveal your damaged sex... You crossed black Acheron, Sappho, to rob me of my vanity Kleis in Indica, distracted by bright ribbons Sappho does not spare her daughters wherever they are... In Indica, in Hades Sappho, Ardhanarishwara Sings to her vulnerable daughters In the perfect, androgynous voice of God... Only Sappho shows The true hermaphrodite face of love Under the still moon, the harsh Bullying stars...