refused us,
insisting on duties elsewhere. So now you make me fear that my father and I have offended you, stirred up
some cause
for grief you can neither suppress nor, because of your
well-known kindness,
reproach us with. Or perhaps your heart is still troubled
by the cruel
and shameful behavior of Koprophoros. If it's so, let me
soothe you
with my father's own words not an hour ago: There's
no man in Corinth
not shocked to the soles of his feet by that fat swine's
treachery.”
As she spoke, her fears melted, and she gazed at him
only with tenderness,
like a loving sister. She was unaware that her servant
had gone
to Kreon, propelled by duty perhaps, perhaps by cruelty, and told of Pyripta's meeting with Jason in the
moonlit hall.
As fast as his feet would carry him, the king ran down and now stood, barefoot and in sleeping dress, peeking
from the doorway,
slyly observing their mutual temptation and blessing
heaven
for his rare good luck.
   He held her hand, aware of her virginal fear of him, and answered softly, “Princess, you
need not
frighten yourself with such gloomy thoughts. If I
tell you the truth,
I remain here for no other reason than pleasure in
the place.” He smiled,
looked down at her. “But nowâyou're rightâI must
go find some bed.
Forgive me for giving you a moment's alarm.” He
had not missed,
I knew by his half-checked smile, the fact that she
spoke in a whisper,
not sorry to be caught here alone with him. Nor did
he miss
her searching look now, desire she newly understood.
He met
her gaze and, after a moment, kissed her. Her hands
moved hungrily
on Jason's back. The pillared room hung frozen like
a crystal
in the light of the vengeful moon. The princess
whispered in his ear.
He frowned, as if torn, and studied her, and could give
her no answer.
The hall gleamed dully. She whispered again, sweet
blue-eyed princess,
with the voice of a child, a curious droplet of moonlight
shining
on her forehead. And again he gave no answer, but
held her in his arms,
looking at her, listening thoughtfully, biding his time.
__________
*
Greek,
zatrikion.
The oak where I clung with my eyes tight shut like
a terrified lizard,
bruised and battered, kicked like old rubbish from
pillar to post,
went flat suddenly in the screaming gale, and I lost
my hand-holdâ
I pressed up closer and hunched my back, but there
was nothing to cling to.
The rough-barked tree became a road of stone on a steep
rock mountain,
endlessâthe labor of emperorsâbut humbled by
pebbles,
cluttered at the sides with bramble bushes and with
shining scree.
And now all around me a slum lurched up till it
blocked out the darknessâ
or became the darknessâstaggering, skewbald. No
longer did the wind
come raging like a lion at the canyon mouth, or
dancing, as if
under pines and cedars, or flying swiftly, whistling and
wailing,
spluttering its anger, or crashing like thunder, whirling,
tumbling
in confusion, shaking rocks, striking treesâno longer
was the wind
so godly, nor the night so godly that sent it; but
rattling it came,
wheeling, violent, from wynds and alleys, poking in
garbage cans,
stirring up the dust, fretting and worrying. It crept into
holes
and knocked on doors, scattered sand and old plaster,
swirled ashes,
muddled in the dirt and tossed up bits of filth. It sidled through tenement windows, crept under double- and
triple-locked doors
of furnished rooms. I huddled, raising my collar
against it,
clamping my lips against street dust and holding my
poor battered hat on.
   And then all at once I was lurching in a rickety
vehicle
through streets so crowded the horses pulling had
nowhere to moveâ
fat black warhorses with ears laid flat and with
steep-rolling eyes,
snorting and stamping irritation at the crowd, but
obedient to the driver.
Staring at his back, I knew by the tingle at the nape
of my neck
that I'd seen him before and should fear him. He turned
his head and I saw
his thick spectacles and smileâmy mirror image,
my double!
With the crowd packed tight around us, I had nowhere
to flee.
   Despite the ragged, churning horde, the chariot was making
some headway.
It rolled in silence, the wheels climbing over small
stones, bits of rubble,
as if struggling onward with conscious effort, the driver
never swerving
to the left or right, like stoop-shouldered, cool-eyed
Truth in a frayed
black coat and hat. We ascended a hill made strange
by haze,
its upper part not dazzling, exactly, its lower region not exactly obscureâdimly visible, impossible to name, changing, shadowy, deep as the ancestor of all
that lives,
awesome and common. The chariot wheels seemed to
move in old ruts;
the wind, the smell of the horses, the writing on the
chariot wallsâ
hieroglyphs smoothed down to nothing, as if by blind
men's fingersâ
had all a mysterious sameness.
   “You're enjoying your vision?” he said and smiled again, showing all his teeth.
The strangest vision that ever was seen in this world,”
I said.
He laughed. “No doubt it seems so,” he said. “So each
man's vision
seems to him. And no doubt it seems a profound
revelation?”
“Yes indeed!” I said, inexplicably furious. He grinned,
tipped his hat,
icily polite. Then, seeing my swollen hand, he remarked, The vision has rules, I hope?” He smiled. “It's not one
of those maddeningâ”
“Certainly not!” I said. “It's an absolute tissue of rules, though not all of them, of course, at
this
stageâ”
“Yes, of course, of course.”
He seemed both myself and, maddeningly, my superior, and deadly. He tapped his chin. “So you're piercing to
the heart of things.”
“Exactly,” I said. He beamed. “Excellent! âAnd there's
something there?
The heart of the matter is not, as we've feared ⦔
He smiled, mock-sheepish.
I tried in panic to think what it was that it was
teaching me,
and my head filled with ideas that were clear as day,
but jumbledâ
images that had no words for them. Somewhat
disconcerted,
I concentrated, clarifying what I saw by explaining to the stranger as I looked. And now suddenly things
grew much plainer.
I now understood things never before expressedâ
inexpressibleâ
though everywhere boldly hinted, so plain, so absurdly
simple
that a fool if he learned the secret would laugh aloud.
I saw
three radiant ladies like pure forms gloriously brightâ
three ladies
and one, as separate roads may wind toward one
same city,
or one same highway be known by separate names.
The floor
of the chariot extended to the rims of the universe,
wheeling away
like a rush of silver spokes devised by the finest of a
rich king's
silversmiths, a man so devoted that he never looks up, and never considers the value of his work, but with
every stroke
proclaims the majesty of silver as the wings of an eagle
praise wind.
There the three ladies danced like dreams in the
limitless skull
of the Unnamable. And the first held a book with great
square pages.
Her name was
Vision,
and her tightly woven robe
was
Light.
The second lady held a wineglass to me and smiled
at my shyness,
and when I saw her smile I remembered I'd met her
a thousand times,
in a thousand unprepossessing shapes, and my heart
was as glad
as the heart of a lonely old man when he sees his son.
Her name
was
Love,
and her robe was
Gentleness.
The third
bright dancer,
nearer than the rest and so plain of face that I laughed
when I saw her,
was lady
Life,
and her attire was
Work.
They danced,
and their musicâ
one with the dancers as a miser's mind grows one
with his guineas
or the soul of a man on the mountain and the soul of
the mountain are one,
subject and object in careful minuetâwas
Selflessness.
I stared dumbfounded at the universal simplicity and the man at my side stared with me, unconvinced.
The whole wide vault
of the galaxies choired, rumbling with the thunder,
what
Life
sang (Give),
and
Love
(Sympathize), and
Vision
(Control).
   I laughed, and the sound was a quake that banged through the bed of Olympos
(the stranger vanished
like a shadow at the coming of a torch), and
Love
was transformed to Aphrodite,
Vision
to Athena, and
Life
to Queen Hera in an
undulant cloak
of snakes. I shrank in dismayâall around me to the
ends of the vision,
the numberless, goggle-eyed gods. Beside me in the
palace, a voice said,
“Calm yourself!” and a hand touched me. “Goddess!”
I whispered,
for though she remained no clearer to my sight than
the morning memory
of a dream, I knew her, and at once I was filled with
an eerie calm
as gentle as the calm of sleeping lovers or the solemn
stillness
of wrecked and abandoned towns. The goddess said,
“Listen!” and raised
her shadowy arm to point.
   On his high throne Zeus sat motionless, cold and remote as the Matterhorn, his right fist raised to his bearded chin. His left hand rested on the hand
of the queen
on the throne beside him. The beams of his eyes shot
calmly to the heart
of the universe, and he did not shift his gaze when
the goddess
of love came forward and kneeled at his feet,
surrounded by her host
of suivantsâgasping old men still crooked with lust,
drooling,
winking obscenely, their flies unbuttoned; middle-aged
women
with plucked eyebrows, smiling serenely past
cocktail glasses,
with eyes artificially eyelashed and slanted, and
propped-up bosoms
exuding the ghostly remains of whole nations of
civet cats;
young lovers crushed-to-one-creature as they staggered
down crowded streets
lunging through fish-smells and sorrow, from bed to bed.
   Aphrodite lifted her hands, dramatic, and cried, “O mighty Lord, hear the prayer of your sorrowful Aphrodite! I've waited, faithful as a child, remembering your promise. In this
same hall
you swore that Jason and Medeia would be known
forever as the truest,
most pitiful of lovers, saints of Aphrodite. Yet
every hour
their once-fierce love grows feebler, turning toward hate.
Queen Hera
revels in my shame, egging him on toward betrayal
in the hall
of Kreon, and Athena bends all her wit to dredging
up excuses
in his fickle heart for trading Medeia for Pyripta. If all you promised you now withdraw, you know I'm
powerless to stop you;
but understand well: fool though you think meâ
all of youâ
you'll never fool me twice with your flipflop
gudgeon-lures.”
The love goddess closed her lovely fists at her sides,
half rising,
and with bright tears rushing down her cheeks,
exclaimed:
“I'll throw myself in the sea! Take warning! We gods
may be
indestructible, but still we can steal death's outer
semblance,
stretched out rigid and useless in the droppings of
whales.” At the thought
of dark desolation at the slimy bottom of the world,
the goddess
was so moved she could speak no more, but sobbed into
her fingers, shaking,
and her worshippers bleated in chorus till the floor of
the palace was slick
with tears. But Zeus, like an old quartz mountain, was
visibly unmoved.
“I've promised you what I've promised,” he said.
“Be satisfied.”
   “But that's not all,” she said, eyes wide, a bright
blush rising
in her plump cheeks. “I find I'm mocked not only
by Hera
and Athena, but even by Artemisâshe who claims to be so pure! I begged her, like a suppliant, to charge
the spirit
of Kreon's daughter with a fiery love of chastity. And what did the cruel and malicious thing do? Went
straight to Medeia
to stir up strife in marriage I Let Artemis explain to
the gods
her purpose in this, and by what right she behaves