old man said:
“Come in my cave, good sirs. There’s a fire, and stones
for chairs.”
He led the way, tapping with his stick, and we followed
him.
He’d shielded the entrance to the cave with scraps of
wood (old crating,
the salvaged planking of ships) till it looked like the
shacks you see
by the city dump. But the glittering walls of the cave
were warm.
Idas and Lynkeus stirred the coals, found logs to add. Jason stood quiet as a boulder, white-bearded, staring.
intensely
at something deep in the fire. Then all but Oidipus sat
down.
I sat in the shadow of the others and reached out
timidly for heat.
Oidipus tipped down his head, both hands on his cane,
his forehead
furrowed like a field. “That was not the least of visits when Theseus came with his Amazon, after his cruel
betrayal
of the beautiful Ariadne, whom Theseus swore he’d
praise
forever. He felt no remorse at that. All the world
betrays.
The fibers binding the oak together or the towering
plane tree
sever, sooner or later; or a life-giving storm from Zeus turns to an enemy and tears up the tree by its roots. In
Nature
steadfast faith is an illusion of fools. So Theseus
claimed,
and scorned her, despite all she’d done for him. But
later, seeing
how deep that emptiness runs — how the center of the
universe
is Hades’ realm, where the absence of meaning lies
bitter on the tongue
as a taste of alum — he changed his opinion. He fought
his way back
to the kingdom of the living and made his own heart a
law contrary
to the world’s. And at last he subdued that passionate
Amazon
by laying plain the deadness at the core, the all-out
battle
of dark gods seething, each against all, like atoms.
Like you,
a metaphysician to the bone, he knew, that scorner of
vows,
the smell of mortality in promises. Without that
knowledge
nothing of importance can begin, though knowledge, if
it goes no further …
The rest is murky. So I saw myself — I, who answered the Sphinx’s riddle and swore by unflagging intelligence to keep Thebes firm. I was shown soon enough the
absurdity
of hopes so overweening. The ground underneath me
shifted,
and all I perceived and reasoned about was a mirror
trick.
I learned that the way of the universe is dim,
unnamable,
shape without shape, image without substance, a dark
implication
from silence….
“And yet it is also true that Herakles was right— with Herakles too I passed a day — who believed his
father
was loving and always near, assuaging torments. (In a
world
confused and contradictory, everything is right, and all potential is real possibility.) By the character of Zeus as he understood it, he judged all things. When he seized
the initiative,
judging for himself, as if Zeus were not there, he was
filled with darkness,
loneliness, sorrow, and fear. Many times he fell, by his
standard,
and many times climbed back, bellowing, striking all
around him
with his wild-man’s club. He was wrong, of course, in
believing his father
was there, or that Zeus felt concern — one more blind,
feelingless power—
but the sorrow and joy in redemption were real enough.
So the Trojan
Aeneas thought, who abandoned the woman he loved
for duty
and sailed out of Carthage, take it as she might. His
voice grew wild,
telling me the story: ‘What pure serenity I felt,’ he
said.
‘ “Let nobody fool you,” I said to the sailors around me
in the ship,
“though the mind yaw this way and that, anchorless,
the heart can be sure
what’s right and wrong, what the gods require. I’ve
proved it myself,
when I turned sternly on selfish desire for that loveliest
of queens
who lulled my noble and difficult purpose to sleep,
seduced
my lion-ambition with presents and comforts, till I’d
half-forgotten
my people’s destiny, my arms grown flabby, the back
that once
easily carried my father from burning Troy grown frail and flimsy as a girl’s, my mind once keen grown soft
with love
and wine and poetry. ‘Who can say what’s best?’ I
sighed,
sunk in the softness of Dido’s scented bed. But a voice outside my life and larger than life came urging me
onward,
peremptorily ordering ‘Up! To Italy!’ And now that my
legs
stand balanced on the deck of the ship again, I know
the truth,
know it by the salt’s sharp bite in the spray, by the
soul-reviving
pressure of the wind. There is no personal pleasure—
none!—
that touches the joy of duty! The man who claims the
gods
are remote, indifferent — the man who feels no presence
of the gods
in all he does — is a man half dead. They exist; they
reveal
their character and will in every leaf and flower. Woe to the fool who closes his heart to them! His heart will
be dark,
his deeds puny and ridiculous!” So I spoke on the ship, ploughing north toward Italy,’ he said. ‘But that was
before.’
He laughed, furious, when he spoke with me now of his
former opinions.
‘Stark madness,’ he said, and gnashed his teeth, pacing
back and forth.
‘I could hardly know that as soon as I left her she’d
killed herself,
though we saw, three nights out of Carthage, the glow
of her funeral pyre.
Not all the magnificent kingdoms on earth are worth
the death
of a single beautiful woman — nay, the death of even a sick old man. When I met her shade I came to my
senses,
but understood too late. And with nothing remaining
but duty,
I followed duty — followed what once I’d known by
feeling,
I thought, as the gods’ command. Came no such feelings
now.
Turnus dead, my better, but a man in my destiny’s way; Lavinia my wife, a useful ally — her bed no Dido’s. Loveless, friendless. A compromiser for the good of the
state,
selfless servant of the gods as a burning stick is servant to the chilly, indifferent shepherd. Such is the sorrow
of things.’
So he spoke, full of anger, longing for death. Nor was
it much better
for Ticius, or Lombard, or Brutus, or the others
dispersed but of Troy,
obedient to what they imagined the high gods’ will.
But each,
sick with betrayals, too cynic for love such as Orpheus
had,
made his peace, built up weary battlements — for all his
scorn
of pride, made his stand of proud banners. And rightly
enough. No worse
than Akhilles’ way — if Odysseus told me, in that much,
the truth.
He would not bend for the pompous bray of civilities,