John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

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 green — where 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 rain—

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 love — like Argus, like the

god Hephaiastos,

a creature sufficient to himself, his heart all schemes—

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 that—

became himself her homeland, father, brother and sister, her soul’s one labor and religion. Can he dare make all

that void?—

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. — Say 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 him—

my master yet — but 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

affliction—

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 it— the voice of a clockwork doll, some old, artificial

monster—

and his slow, mechanical gestures enforced the same

effect,

mockery of life. ‘Think 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 past—

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 eyes — great Thebes whose outer

walls were oceans,

whose kingdom’s heart was all Ethiopia and Egypt,

city of Kadmos the Wanderer, noblest of dragon

slayers—

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