Knowledge
was all, in the end; the pawks in the book he’d leave to
the future,
if luck allowed its survival. Not so with Orpheus, whose machine was art, a bit for piercing the surface
of things,
advancing nothing, returning again and again to the
cryptarch
heart, where there is no progress and each new physical
engine
threatens the soul’s equilibrium. At the words of Argus
he paled, though I’d heard him express, himself,
thoughts twice as grim.
‘Not true,’ he shouted. He clutched my shoulder, pointed
at a glode
where blue burst through with a serenity like violence.
The gods see more than we mortals dream. I tell you,
Jason,
and swear to it too, these seas that fill us with terror
are alive
with nymphs, pale nereids sent here by Hera. They
leap like dolphins,
running on the reefs and breaking waves, fanning our
sails
with the swing of invisible skirts; and the hand of the
tiller is the hand
of Thetis herself, sweet nereid wife of Lord Peleus. Whatever the bluster of the wandering rocks, we need
not fear them.
The world is more than mechanics. If that weren’t so,
we’d be wrecked
long since!’ In a sea of choices, none of them certain,
I chose
to believe him. We kept her upright, scudding with the
wind, accepting
any opening offered. Whatever the reason, we came to quiet seas and sunlight, for which we thanked the
gods,
on the chance they’d had some hand in it. It was not
my part
to speculate.
“We were close inshore, so close that through the haze on the land we could hear the mooing of cattle
and bleating
of sheep. We were drenched, half-starved, stone-numb
with weariness,
but according to the boy at the helm, Ankaios, the land
was the isle
of Helios. We needed, God knew, no further bavardage with him. And so we continued on and arrived,
half-dead,
at the isle of the pale Phaiakians.
“There we married, Medeia and I, our hands forced by necessity. A fleet of Kolchians,
arriving by way of the Black Sea, drove Alkinoös to a choice. Medeia, by secret dealing with Alkinoös’ queen, outwitted the old man’s justice— for which I was glad enough, no warbling songbird
gladder,
for I knew then nothing of the wandering rocks we had
yet to face,
that child of the sun and I, back home in Iolkos. She
was,
not only in my eyes but even to men who despised the
race
of Aia, a woman more fair than the pantarb rising sun, the moon on the sea, the sky-wide armies of Aietes
with all
their trumpets, crimson banners, bronze-clad horsemen.
She seemed
as fair beside all others as a dew-lit rose of Sharon in a trinsicate hedge of thorn, more fine than a silver
dish
the curve of her thighs like a necklace wrought by a
master hand.
My heart sang like Orpheus’ lyre on that wedding night, played like lights in a fountain — and whose would not?
“We sailed joyful, Phaiakian maidens attending Medeia, Phaiakian sailors heaving on the rowing seats left vacant by the
dead.
And so came even in sight of Argos’ peaks. Mad Idas danced in a fit of wild joy. The prophecy of Idmon had
failed:
the hounds of Zeus had forgotten him, or if not, at least, had spared him for now, had spared him the doom he’d
dreaded most,
a death that dragged down friends. But even as
he danced for joy,
his brother, Lynkeus of the amazing eyes, put his black
hand gently
on Idas’ shoulders, gazing into the sea and beyond the curve of the gray horizon. Nor was it long before we too saw it — a stourmass terrible and swift,
blackening the western sky,
rushing toward us like a fist. We heaved at the Argo’s oars. Too late! We lurched under
murderous winds,
black skies like screaming apes. We struck we knew
not where,
hurled by the flood-tide high and dry. Then, swift as an
eagle,
the storm was gone. We leaped down full of dismay.
Gray mist,
a landscape sprawling like a dried-up corpse, unwaled,
immense.
We could see no watering place, no path, no farmstead.
A world
calcined, silent and abandoned. Again the boy Ankaios wept, and all who had learned navigation shared his
woe.
No ship, not even the Argo, could suffer the shoals and
breakers
the tidal wave had hurtled us unharmed past. There
was no
return, the way we’d come, and ahead of us, desert, gray, as quiet as a drugged man’s dreams. Poor Idas sifted our gold and gems, the Phaiakians’ gift, and
howled
and bit at his lips until blood wet his kinky beard.
Though the sand
and sea-smoothed rocks were scorching, our hearts
were chilled. The crew
strayed vaguely, seeking some route of escape. Bereft
of schemes
I watched them and had no spirit to call them back,
maintain
mock-order. When the cool of nightfall came, they
returned. No news.
And so we parted again, each seeking a resting place
sheltered from the deepening chill. Medeia lay shivering,
moaning,
in the midst of her Phaiakian maidens, her head and
chest on fire
with the strange plaguing illness, Helios’ curse. All night the maids, their golden tresses in the sand, cried out
and wept,
as shrill as the twittering of unfledged birds when they
lie, broken,
on the rocks at the foot of the larch. At dawn the crew
rose up
once more and staggered to the sunlight, starved, throats
parched with thirst,
no water in sight but the salt-thick sea — the piled-up
gifts
of the Phaiakians mocking our poverty — and again set
out
fierce-willed as desert lions, in search of escape. And
again
returned with nothing to report.
“We gave up hope that night. All that will could achieve, we’d done. We sought out
shelters,
prepared to accept our death, the sun’s revenge, triumph of Helios. We listened to the whimpers of the maidens
and wept for them,
and secretly cursed the indifferent, mechanical stars.
“But on that Libyan shore dwelled highborn nymphs. They
heard the laments
of the maids and the groans of Medeia. And when it
was noon, and the sun
so fierce that the very air crackled, they came, for pity of the maidens, doomed unfulfilled, having neither
men nor sons,
and stood above me, and brushed my cloak’s protection
from my eyes
and called to me in a strange voice, a voice I
remembered
yet could not place — some shrew with the flat Argonian
accent
I’d known as a child. — ‘Jason!’ I looked, saw nothing
but the blinding
sun. They cried, ‘Pay back the womb that has borne so
much.
Call strength from murdered men. Redeem these
thousand shames.
Embrace your ruin, you who have preached so much
on mindless
struggle, unreasoning hope. Have you still no love?’ So
they spoke,