when Lord Dionysos — power that turns spilt blood to
wine,
unseen master of vineyards — awarded them mast’ry
of the dead.
And I’ve seen things darker still, though the god has
sealed my eyes.
All I have seen reveals the same: Useless to speak. Well-meaning man—” He frowned, looking into
darkness. “You may
see more than you wish of that golden fleece. Good
night.”
But Jason
stayed, questioning. “Say what you mean about the
fleece. No riddles.”
“Useless to say,” the blind man sighed. He shook his
head.
But Jason clung to his hand, still questioning. “Warn
me plainly.”
Again the blind man sighed. “If I were to warn you,
Jason,
that what you’ve planned will hiss this land to darkness,
devour
the sun and moon, hurl seas and winds off course,
kill kings—
would you change your course, confine yourself to your
room like a sick
old pirate robbed of his legs?” Jason was silent. The
black seer
nodded, frowning, face turned earthward. “There will
be sorrow.
I give you the word of a specialist in pains of the soul
and heart,
as you will be, soon. Let proud men scoff — as you scoff
now—
at the idea of the unalterable. There are, between the world and the mind, conjunctions whose violent
issue’s more sure
than sun and rain. So every age of man begins: an idea striking a recalcitrant world as steel strikes flint, each an absolute, intransigent. The collision sparks an uncontrollable, accelerating shock that must arc
through life
from end to end until nothing is left but light, and
silence,
loveless and calm as the eyes of the sphinx — pure
knowledge, pure beast.
Good night, son of Aison.” And so at last Lord Jason
released
the black man’s hand and, troubled, turned again to
the city.
The white stars hung in the branches above Medeia’s
room
like dewdrops trapped in a spiderweb. The garden,
below,
was vague, obscured by mist, the leaves and flowers
so heavy
it seemed that the night was drugged. Asleep, Medeia
stirred,
restless in her bed, and whispered something, her mind
alarmed
by dreams. She sucked in breath and turned her face on the pillow. The stars shone full on it: a
face so soft,
so gentle and innocent, I caught my breath. She opened
her eyes
and stared straight at me, as though she had some faint
sense of my presence.
Then she looked off, dismissing me, a harmless
apparition
in spectacles, black hat, a queer black overcoat…
She came to understand, slowly, that she lay alone, and she frowned, thinking — whether of Jason or of her
recent dream
I couldn’t guess. She pushed back the cover gently and
reached
with beautiful legs to the floor. As if walking in her
sleep, she moved
to the window, drawing her robe around her, and
leaned on the sill,
gazing, troubled, at the thickening sky. Her lips framed
words.
“Raven, raven, come to me:
Raven, tell me what you see!”
There was a flutter in the darkness, and then, on the
sill by her white hand,
stood a raven with eyes like a mad child’s. He walked
past her arm
to peek at me, head cocked, suspicious. And then he too dismissed me. She touched his head with moon-white
fingertips;
he opened his blue-black wings. They glinted like coal.
“Raven,
speak,” she whispered, touching him softly, brushing
his crown
with her lips. He moved away three steps, glanced at
the moon,
then at her. He walked on the sill, head tipped, his
shining wings
opened a little, like a creature of two minds. Then, in a madhouse voice, his eyes like silver pins, he said:
“The old wheel wobbles, reels about;
One lady’s in, one lady’s out.”
He laughed and would say no more. Medeia’s fists closed. The raven’s wings stretched wide in alarm, and he
vanished in the night.
On bare feet then, no candle or torch to light her
way—
her eyes on fire, streaming, clutching old violence— Medeia moved like a cold, slow draught from room to
room,
fingertips brushing the damp stone walls, her white
robe trailing,
light as the touch of a snowflake on dark-tiled floors.
She came
to the room where her children slept, In one bed, side
by side,
and there she paused. She knelt by the bed and looked
at them,
and after a time she reached out gently to touch their
cheeks,
first one, then the other, too lightly to change their
sleep. Her hair
fell soft, glowing, as soft as the children’s hair. Then—
tears
on her cheeks, no sigh, no sound escaping her lips—
she rose
and swiftly returned to her room. The two old slaves
in the house—
the man and a woman — stirred restlessly.
There Jason found her,
lying silent and pale in the moonlight. He kissed her
brow,
too lightly to change her sleep, then quietly undressed
himself
and crawled into bed beside her. Half sleeping already,
he moved
his dark hand over her waist — her arm moved slightly
for him—
and gently cupped her breast. He slept. Medeia’s eyes were open, staring at the wall. They shone like ice,
as bright
as raven’s eyes. The garden, sheeted in fog, was still. A cloudshape formed. It stretched dark wings and
blanketed the moon.
3
I was alone, leaning on the tree, shivering. I listened
to the wind.
Below the thick, gnarled roots of the oak there was no
firm ground,
but a void, a bottomless abyss, and there were voices—
sounds
like the voices of leaves, I thought, or the babble of
children, or gods.
I made out a shadowy form. The phantom moved toward
me,
floating in the dark like a ship. It reached to me,
touched my hand,
and the tree became an enormous door whose upper
reaches
plunged into space — the ring, the keyhole, the golden
hinges
light-years off. Even as I watched the great door grew. I trembled. The surface of the door was wrought from
end to end
with dragon shapes, and all around the immense beasts there were smaller dragons, and even the pores of the
smaller dragons
were dragons, growing as I watched. Slowly, the door
swung open.
I had come to the house of the gods.
Above the cavern where the dark coiled Father of
Centuries
lay bound, groaning, in chains forged by everlasting fire, Zeus sat smiling, serene as the highest of mountaintops, his eyes like an eagle’s, aware of the four directions.
Beside him—
stately, magnificent, dreadful to behold — Hera sat,
draped