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 music—
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 minuet — was 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 dismay — all 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 suivants — gasping 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 welclass="underline" fool though you think me—
all of you—
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 Artemis — she 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
so horribly.”
Zeus said, “If Artemis wishes to speak let her speak.”
But the goddess
at my side said nothing. ‘Then I will speak,” said
Zeus crossly,
disdaining to shift his glance to tearful Aphrodite.
“The fire
of zeal has never had a purpose. It is what it is, simply, and any ends it may stumble to it’s indifferent to. As for Medeia, make no mistake, nothing on earth is more pure — more raised from self to selfless
absolute—
than a woman betrayed. For all their esteem,
immortal gods
follow like foaming rivers the channels available
to them.
Enough. Annoy us no more, Goddess.” She backed off,
curtsying,
glancing furtively around to see who might be snickering
at her.
And now gray-eyed Athena spoke, the goddess of cities and goddess of works of mind. In her shadow professors
crouched,
stern and rebuking, with swollen red faces and
pedantic hearts;
lawyers at the edge of apoplexy from righteous
indignation;
poets and painters with their pockets crammed full of
sharp scissors and knives;
and ministers cunning in Hebrew. With a smile
disarming and humorous—
but I knew her heart was troubled — she said, “Father
of the Gods,
no one has firmer faith than I in your power to keep all promises — complex and contradictory
as at times they seem.” She glanced at the goddess
of love and smiled,
then added, her tone too casual, I thought, and her teeth