John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

lumbering fleets,

some sliding, huge as cities, on the surface, some

drifting under us,

some of them groaning and whining in the air. At times

his voice

comes back to him, though not his mind, and he

shouts at them:

‘Fools! You are caught in irrelevant forms: existence

as comedy,

tragedy, epic!’ We let him rave. The end is inevitable. We sail, search on for Erekhtheus, in an endlessly

changing

sea.” So he spoke, and ended.

Then Oidipus rose from the fire and tapped with his cane to the mouth of the cave. He

stood a long while

in sad meditation, then pointed the way, as well as

he knew how.

The winds had brought them far, far north. It would

take them months

to row the Argo to warmer seas and the kingdom

of Aigeus.

“Go with my blessing,” the blind king said. “May the

goddess of love

bend down in awe. The idea of desire is changed, made

holy.”

They thanked him, and Jason seized his hand and

struggled to speak.

But Oidipus raised his fingers to Jason’s lips and said, “No matter.” Jason bowed, and so they parted. In haste they mounted the Argo, and Idas signalled the rowers.

The blades

dug in, backing water, and the black ship groaned,

dragging off the shore,

drawing away into darkness and smoke. The night

was filled

with explosions and lights, what might have been some

great celebration

or might have been some final, maniacal war.

Then came

wind out of space, and the island vanished. I was

falling, clinging

to my hat. But the tree was falling with me, its huge

gnarled roots

reaching toward the abyss. I hung on, cried, “Goddess,

goddess!”

In the thick dark beams of the tree above me,

ravens sat watching

with unblinking eyes. I heard all at once, from end

to end

of the universe, Medeia’s laugh, full of rage and sorrow, the anger of all who were ever betrayed, their hearts

understood

too late. At once — creation ex nihilo, bold leap of Art, my childhood’s hope — the base of the tree shot infinitely

downward

and the top upward, and the central branches shot

infinitely left

and right, to the ends of darkness, and everything

was firm again,

everything still. A voice that filled all the depth

and breadth

of the universe said: Nothing is impossible!

Nothing is definite!

Be calm! Be brave! But I knew the voice: Jason’s,

full of woe.

A rope snapped, close at hand, and I heard the sailyard

fall,

and ravens flew up in the night, screeching, and Idas

cried out.

Oidipus, sitting alone in his cave, put a stick on the fire. “Nothing is impossible, nothing is definite. Be still,”

he whispered.

The Moirai, three old sisters, solemnly nodded in

the night.

In a distant time I saw these things, and in all our times, when angry Medeia was still on earth, and the

mind of Jason

struggled to undo disaster, defiant of destiny, crushed:

I saw these things in a world of old graves where

winecups waited,

and King Dionysos-Christ refused to die, though

forgotten—

drinking and dancing toward birth — and Artemis,

with empty eyes,

sang life’s final despair, proud scorn of hope, in a room gone strange, decaying … a sleeping planet adrift

and drugged …

while deep in the night old snakes were coupling with

murderous intent.