of your labor, bearing him
sons. Great tears rushed down his cheeks, and his
shoulders shook.
In part of his mind — we saw it shaping — he must have
seen
that the fault was his, not yours: you showed him what
had to be,
and gave him a plan. He’d acted upon it as gladly, that
night,
as he’d have changed places with you now. Or the fault
was no one’s — love
a turmoil prior to rules, and rumbling on beyond the last idea’s collapse. His eyes grew warmer then. And yours as well. No house was ever more happy,
for a time—
the twins babbling in their sunlit cribs, the master and
mistress
warmer than sunbeams arm in arm, sitting at the
window,
talking and laughing, or sitting in jewelled crowns,
on thrones
level with Pelias and his queen’s. If troublesome
shadows of the past
returned, you could drive them back.
“But soon time changed that too.”
Her wide mouth closed, trembling, and her faded slate
eyes stared.
“Pelias was a fool; perhaps far worse. And now, at times, when Pelias would hinder his will, Lord Jason would
frown, speak sharply
to you, or to us, or the twins. Your eyes got the she-wolf
look.
His slightest glance of annoyance, and up your poison
seethed,
old bile of guilt, self-hate, pride, love — black nightmare
shapes:
Aphrodite whispered and teased, cruel Hera, and Athena, gray-eyed fox. Seize the throne for him! — Jason’s
by right!
Would old Aietes hesitate even for an instant, dismayed by a sickly usurper of a nephew’s lawful place?
Strike out!’
I needn’t remind you of the rest. Screams in the palace,
blood,
the cries of the children awakened in haste when you
fled. And now,
for that, from time to time, his eyes go cold.”
The slave
came forward a little, tortuously moving her thick
canes inch
by inch. “I’ve lived some while, Medeia. There are
things I know.
Give the man time, and he’ll come to see, now too,
that the fault
was as much his own as yours. Let him be. Be patient,
my lady.
No woman yet has defeated a stubborn, ambitious man by force.”
Medeia turned, smiling. But her eyes were wild.
“I won’t win his heart with labor pains again,” she said, “barren as a rock, wrecked as the cities he burns in his
wake
with the same Akhaian lust.”
“Medeia” the old woman moaned,
“leave it to the gods! Let time sift it! Tell me, what wife in all the ages of the world has seized by her own
hand’s power
more than the staddle of a grave? Not even the
mightiest king
wins more in the end. Consider the tumbled columns
of the bed
of the giant Og. His fame is now mere sand, a ring of stones that startles the wilderness like a ghostly
whisper
of jackals crying in the night. My exiled people have a prophecy for those who trust in themselves. They say:
Their horses are swifter than leopards,
fiercer than wolves in the dark;
their horsemen plunge on, advancing from afar,
swooping like an eagle to stoop on its prey.
They come for plunder, mile on mile of them,
their faces searching like an east wind;
they scoop up prisoners like sand.
They scoff at kings,
they laugh at princes.
They make light of the mightiest fortresses:
they heap up ramps of earth and take them.
Then the wind changes and is gone.
Woe to the man who worships his arm’s omnipotence!
I would not wave it away as the noise of a beaten
people
shorn of all tools of war but the rattle of poetry. They were mighty themselves when they sang it first,
though humbled now.
Learn to accept! What sorrow have you more great
than the fall
of a thousand thousand cities since time began?
You have sons.
How can you speak of a ruined womb, Akhaian lust, when civilizations — races of men with the hopes
of gods—
are tumbled to fine-grained ashes, fallen out of history?”
“Enough!” Medeia said. She turned, in her eyes a
flicker
like cauldron light. “Self-pity, you say. So it is. I’ll end it, tear all trace from my heart and stare, dead on, at night as the tigress slaughters her young, then waits for the
hunter’s attack.
We’re all poor fools, poor witless benoms to startle
a crow
in the cast-off grandeur of scullery-slaves. I grant the
wisdom
of your gloomy people’s prophecy. I howl for justice. Insane! Where’s justice, or beauty, or love? Where
grounds for the pride
you charge me with? Childish illusions — not even lies our parents told, but lies we fashioned ourselves in
the playroom,
prettily singing to dolls, dead children of sawed-down
trees.
How dare I hoot for love, claim honor owed to me? Who in the sky ever promised me love or honor? O,
the plan
is plain as day, if anyone cares to read. In the shade of the sweetly laden tree, the fat-sacked snake. Good,
evil
lock in the essence of things. The Egyptians know—
with their great god
Re, by day the creative sun, by night the serpent, mindless swallower of frogs, palaces. Let me be one with the universe, then: blind creation and blind
destruction,
indifferent to birth and death as drifting sand.
Great gods,
save me from the childish virgin’s fantasy, purity of
heart,
gentleness, courage in a merely created man! We fall in love with the image of a mythic, theandric father,
domineering
oakfirm tower of strength, and we find, as our mothers
found,
the tower is home to a mouse peeking groundward with
terrified eyes.
We teach them to act, or act for them. We teach their
audaculous hands
the delicate tricks of love-making, teach their abstract heads the truth about power. They pay us by sliding
their hands
up slavegirls’ thighs, or turning the tricks of supremacy on us. And then, when we’re ready to shriek and claw,
strike back
with the moon-cold anger of the huntress-goddess,
absolute
idea of ice, cold flame of Artemis, they come to us like hurt children, showing the wounds from some
other woman
or clever woman’s man, and we’re won again, seduced by the only power on earth more cruel, more viciously
pure
of heart than woman, ancient ambiguous garden—
old monster
Motherhood.”
“Medeia, stop!” The dim eyes widened
and the mouth gaped for air. “Media, child!” she