shushing them. She slued clumsily, inching around on the hassock to watch them pass. The old man
paused, looked in,
his lean face drawn and crabbed. The eyebags drooping
to his cheeks
were as gray and wrinkled as bark. He whispered,
“What's this moaning
that fills all the house with noise? How could you
leave your lady?
Did Medeia consent?”
   She shook her head, lips trembling, tears now brimming afresh. “Old manâold guardian
of Jason's sonsâ
how can the troubles of masters not soon bring sorrow
to their slaves?
I've left her alone for a little to grant my own grief
vent.”
   He turned his head, as if looking through walls to
Medeia's room.
“No change?” he asked. She covered her face.
“No change,” she said.
“My poor Medeia's troubles have scarcely begun.”
   The old man narrowed his eyes. Then, hoarsely: Poor blind foolâ
if slaves
may say such things of masters. There's reason more
than she knows
for all this woe and rage.”
   Agapetika inched around more to stare at the man in fear. “What now?” she exclaimed.
“Sir, do not
keep from me what you've heard.”
   He shook his head. “No, nothing. Vague speculation. Mere idle talk.” The twins had
run onâ
romping to their room, indifferent and blind to miseryâ and his eyes went after them, grudging. The whole
afternoon they'd kept him
plodding with hardly a rest. At the crest of every hill his old heart thudded in his throat, and his brains went
light, so that
to keep his knees from buckling he would stretch out
his hands to a tree
or ivied gatepost, coughing and gulping for air.
In the park
high above seacliffs, he'd met with a fellow slave,
a servant
in Kreon's palace, and there, where leafless ramdikes
arched
past hedges still bright greenâwhere the sky,
the distant buildings,
highways and bridges were as drab as in winter
despite the glow
of lawns grown rich and lush, deceived by late
summer rainâ
he'd heard this newest catastrophe. He revealed it now, compelled by the old woman's eyes. He said: “The
palace slaves,
who know the old king's purposes sooner than
Kreon himself,
are certain the contest's settled already, as though
no man
had spoken in all this time but Jason alone.”
   “Then our fears are realized,” the old woman said; “no hope of escape!”
   There's more,” he said, and avoided her look. “In the
palace they say
the king is resolved to expel our mistress and her
two sons
from Corinth. He thinks it a generous act, considering
her powers
and her sons' inevitable position as royal pretenders.
I cannot
say all this is true. But I fear it may be.”
   “And will our Jason allow such things?” the old woman asked.
But already
she saw that he might. She whimpered, Though he and
Medeia are at odds,
surely he hasn't forgotten so soon what pain she
suffered,
torn long ago from her homeland and dearest friends!
Though he needs
no friends himself, quick to win facile admirers, thanks to that dancing tongue, and at any rate more pleased,
by nature,
with work than with loveâlike Argus, like the
god Hephaiastos,
a creature sufficient to himself, his heart all schemesâ
surely
he knows our lady's needs! She might have been queen,
herself,
of all dark-forested Kolchis, had her fate run otherwise; she might have had no more need than he of enfolding
arms,
shield against darkness and senselessness. He robbed
her of thatâ
became himself her homeland, father, brother and sister, her soul's one labor and religion. Can he dare make all
that void?â
by a fingersnap make all she's lived an illusion?
Can he turn
on his own two children, change them to shadows,
to nothing, as though
they'd no more solid flesh than a glimmering
wizard's trick?”
   As if to himself, the old man said, “The familiar ties are weaker now. He's no more a friend to this gloomy,
crumbling
house. âSay nothing to Medeia.”
   Just then, beside him at the door, the twins appeared and looked in, curious, no longer
laughing,
coming to see what was wrong. The woman cried,
“Children, behold
what love your father bears for you! I will not
curse himâ
my master yetâbut no man alive is more treasonous?
The male slave scowled. “Let the children be, mere
eight-year-olds,
what have they to do with treasons? As for Jason,
what man
is better, old woman? Now that you're old, look squarely
at the world.
All men care for themselves and for nobody else.
All men
would joyfully swap away sons for the pleasures of a
new bride's bed.”
She was still, looking at the children. At last, with
a heavy sigh:
“Go, boys, play in your room. All will be well.” And then to the attendant: “You, sir, keep them off to themselves,
I beg you.
Take them nowhere in range of their mother in
her present mood.
Already I've seen her glaring at the children savagely,
threatening mischief. She'll not leave off this rage,
I know,
till she's struck some victim dead. I pray to the gods
her wrath
may light among foes, not friends.”
   From deeper in the house then came a wail deep-throated and wild as the cry of a
jungle beast.
My veins ran ice and I jerked up my arm to my face.
A shock
of pain flashed through me, innumerable bruises, and
I nearly revealed
my hiding place in the shadow of the black oak bed.
The slaves
listened to Medeia's wail as if numbed. When the
old woman
could speak, she said: “Go to your room now quickly!
Be wary!
Do not provoke that violent heart! Hurry! Go swiftly!
The soul of her father is alive in her. This gathering
cloud
of tears and wailing will enkindle soon far stormier
flashes.
A spirit like hers, headstrong and bitterly stung by
afflictionâ
what wild and reckless deeds may it not dare thunder
on us?”
I glanced at the garden, my eyes in flight from the
anguish of the house,
and my heart leaped. There stood the goddess Artemis,
tall
as a stone tower, watching with burning eyes.
   And then the sea-kings were gathered around me, Jason on
the dais, with Kreon,
and the princess rigid in her silver chair. The whole
wide hall,
so it seemed to me, was a-gleam with the light
of Artemis.
   Paidoboron spoke, dark-bearded king
of barren moraine, debris of glaciers, in his gloomy eyes the stillness of tideless seas. The assembled kings
sat hushed.
At a dark door far from the dais, the slave Ipnolebes
watched,
his hand on the shoulder of a boy.
   “Think back,” Paidoboron said, “on the days of old.” His voice had nothing alive in itâ the voice of a clockwork doll, some old, artificial
monsterâ
and his slow, mechanical gestures enforced the same
effect,
mockery of life. âThink over the years and down
the ages.”
He pointed as if to the darkness of endless corridors. “
Nation on nation the gods have raised up, then
crushed again.
Again and again the bow of the mighty the gods have
broken,
and the feeble and oppressed they have girded with
strength. No law of the stars
is surer than this: Empires shall rise and fall forever till the day of the earth's destruction. The cities of the
strong will burn
and the bones of the master be hurled on the
smouldering garbage mounds
beyond the city's gates. Then he who was weak shall
be robed
in zibelline, and in place of his shackles
the greaves of a warrior king, and his slaves
shall be splendid nobles of the age just pastâ
till he too falls to the jackals.” He paused, looked hard
at Kreon.
“Has it not yet struck you, Corinthian king? Though
you watched Thebes burn
with your own two eyesâgreat Thebes whose outer
walls were oceans,
whose kingdom's heart was all Ethiopia and Egypt,
city of Kadmos the Wanderer, noblest of dragon
slayersâ
have you never been struck by the deadly regularity with which, like suns, great kingdoms rise and fall?
Is all this
accident? To the ends of the world the rubble stretches, the scattered orts of banquets, the fumets of
chariot-horses,
fortresses ruined, thrones, the occamy spangles of once-proud concubines. All human tongues record the same in their legendry: the dark agonals of kings. And still man's heart inclines to power, to the wealth and ease,
rich art,
fine food, of the demon city. But I tell you the truth:
the earth
at our feet cries out its curse on that tumorous growth.
In the shade
of walls, earth dies; it stiffens, trampled by sandals,
and cracks.
The city's wealth cries softly to marauders in the night,
like a whore
at the jalousie. Her mounds bring plagues, her discharge
insects,
dry rot, rats. Still the city grows, dark lure of ambition, hunger of the exiled spirit, abandoned forever by
the stars,
for the wombsoft slosh of fat. The corpus of law grows
bloated
like a corpse recovered from the sea; and those who
enforce the law
grow cynical and rich, foxy, wolfish, beyond inculpation by any man, till all but frampold devils are shackled in chains. Then like a thigh-wound festering, the city
overflows
her battlements and coignsârobs all the land
surrounding for victuals,
chops green-forested mountains for timber, quogs out
quarries,
to heave up monuments worthy of the devastating
power of her kings,
tombs for the slyest of her paracletes, the most
celebrated
of her enemy-smashers, deified dragon-menâ
sky-high houses
staddled on broken-backed slaves. Consumes the land,
the clouds;
builds ships for trade, extends her scope; finds conquest
cheaper,
more durable. And so that hour arrives at last
when the city, towering like a mammoth oakâgreat
shining bartizans,
pennons of crimson and gold like leaves in autumn
on her high-
spired parapetsâan oak majestic in its ignorant pride, rotten at the coreâshudders suddenly at an odd
new wind,
and trembles, incredulous, shaken by the gale of
exploited men's howls,
and to all the world's astonishment, siles down.
So it's gone
for a thousand, thousand years, and so it will continue.
   “You may say, âNevertheless, there is good in cities: Where else
can men
support great art? The complexity of music, the
intrinsicate craft
of poetry? Who else can pay for architecture,
the gifts of science, ennobling pleasure of philosophy?'
I answer this: To a hungry man, all food is food, sufficient to his need. Trembling with weakness, he
does not ask
for meats denatured by subtle rocamboles. But the
man well-fed,
as short of breath as a boar at the trough, dull-headed
with wine,
bloated on the blood of his workers' childrenâthat
man has tastes
more particular: not taste for food but for taste itself. An art has been born. So the poet whose hunger is
simply to speakâ
tell truths, right wrongsâwhat need has he for the
lipogram,
for colors of rhetoric, antilibrations of phrase on phrase?
Only to the fool who believes all truths debatable, who believes true virtue resides not in men but
in eulogies,
true sorrow not in partings but in apopemptic hymns, and true thought nowhere but in atramentaceous
scrolleryâ
only to him is elegant style, mere scent, good food.
The city, bedded on the sorrows of the poor, compacts
new sweets
to incense the corpse of the weary rich.
   “âAnd as for science, cure my disease and I'll thank you for it. Yet I do
not think
you mix your potions and juleps for me. By the ebony
beds
of the old loud-snoring mighty you wring your hands
and spoon out
remediesâdole out health for the coin of convalescent
spiders
in a kingdom of hapless flies. For the spider, health itself becomes not need but taste, where the treatment of
fevers and chills,
chapped lips, a slight but debilitating dryness of the
palate while eating
cake, are men's chief griefs. So it is with all the arts; so even Queen Theology turns a casual amusement for the pornerastic sky- and earth-consumer, a flatulence past the power of all man's remedies. Such is my
judgment.
I may be in errorâa man as remote from the bustlings