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  Jason and Medeia

  John Gardner

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  John Gardner wrote Jason and Medeia as a book-length poem, complete with line breaks and indents that do not usually occur in works of prose. In keeping with the author’s intentions, this ebook edition has deliberately kept the original formatting.

  TO JOAN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This poem was made possible by financial gifts from my friends Marilyn Burns, Ruby Cohn, and Duncan M. Luke and by grants from Southern Illinois University and the National Endowment for the Arts. I thank William H. Gass for permission to borrow and twist passages from his Fiction and the Figures of Life, and Gary Snyder for permission to borrow and twist two of his translations from the Cold Mountain series. Parts of this poem freely translate sections of Apollonios Rhodios’ Argonautica and Euripides’ Medeia, among other things.

  And so the night will come to you: an end of vision;

  darkness for you: an end of divination.

  The sun will set for the prophets,

  the day will go black for them.

  Then the seers will be covered with shame,

  the diviners with confusion;

  they will all cover their lips,

  because no answer comes from God.

  MICAH 3:6—7

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

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  22

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  24

  A Biography of John Gardner

  1

  I dreamed I awakened in a valley where no life stirred,

  no cry

  of a fox sparked up out of stillness; a night of ashes.

  I was sitting

  in a room that seemed a familiar defense against

  darkness, but decayed,

  the heavy old book I’d been reading still open on my

  knees. The lamp

  had burned out long ago; at the socket of the bulb,

  thick rust.

  All around me like weather lay the smell of the

  abandoned house,

  dampness in every timber, the wallpaper blistered,

  dark-seamed,

  at the window, the curtains mindlessly groping inward,

  and beyond,

  gray mist, wet limbs of trees. I seemed to be waiting

  for someone.

  And then (my eyes had been tricked) I saw her—

  a slight, pale figure

  standing at the center of the room, present from

  the first, forlorn,

  around her an earth-smell, silence, the memory of a

  death. In fear

  I clutched the arms of my chair. I whispered:

  “Dream visitor

  in a dreaming house, tell me what message you bring

  from the grave,

  or bring from my childhood, whatever unknown or

  forgotten land

  you haunt!” So I spoke, bolt-upright, trembling; but the ghost-shape, moonlit figure in mourning, was silent, as if she could neither see nor hear. She

  had once

  been beautiful, I saw: red hair that streamed like fire, charged like a storm with life. Alive no longer.

  She began

  to fade, dissolve like a mist. There was only the

  moonlight.

  Then came

  from the night what I thought was the face of a man

  familiar with books,

  old wines, and royalty—dark head slightly lowered, eyes amused, neither cynical nor fully trusting: cool eyes set for anything—a man who could spin a yarn and if occasion forced him, fight.

  Then I saw another shade,

  a poet, I thought, his hair like a willow in a light wind, in his arms a golden lyre. He changed the room to sky by the touch of a single string—or the dream-change

  rang in the lyre:

  no watchfulness could tell which sea-dark power

  moved first.

  If I closed my eyes, it seemed the song of the man’s harp was the world singing, and the sound that came from

  his lips the song

  of hills and trees. A man could revive the dead

  with a harp

  like that, I thought; and the dead would glance back

  in anguish at the grave,

  torn between beauty’s pain and death’s flat certainties.

  (This was a vision stranger than any a man ever saw. I rose and stepped in close. There came a whistling

  wind.

  My heart quaked. I’d come, God knew, beyond my

  depth.

  I found a huge old tree, vast oak, and clung to it,

  waiting.)

  And now still another ghost rose up, pale silent mist: the mightiest mortal who’d ever reached that thestral

  shore,

  his eyes like a child’s. They seemed remote from me

  as stars

  on a hushed December night. His whitened lips moved, and I strained forward; but then some wider vision

  stirred,

  blurring my sight: the swaying shadow of a huge snake, a ship reeling, a room in a palace awash in blood, a woman screaming, afire …

  The sea went dark. Then all

  grew still. I bided my time, the will of the moon-goddess.

  A king stood scowling out over blue-green valleys.

  He seemed

  half giant, but enfeebled by age, his sinews slackening

  to fat.

  In the vast white house behind him, chamber rising

  out of

  chamber, nothing moved. There was no wind, no breeze. In the southwest, great dark towers of cloud were

  piled high,

  like summercastles thrown up in haste to shield ballistas, archers of ichor and air, antique, ignivomous engines, tottering in for siege, their black escarpments charged like thunderheads in a dream. Light bloomed, inside

  the nearest—

  there was no sound—and then, at the king’s left side

  appeared

  a stooped old man in black. He came from nowhere—

  leering

  sycophant wringing his crooked-knuckled hands, the

  skin

  as white as his beard, as white as the sun through

  whitecaps riding

  storm-churned seas. The king stood looking down at

  him, casual,

  believing he knew him well. “My lord!” the old man said, “good Kreon, noblest of men and most unfortunate!” He snatched at the hem of the king’s robe and kissed it,

  smiling.

  I saw that the old man’s eyes and mouth were pits. I

  tried

  to shout, struggle toward them. I could neither move

  nor speak.

  Kreon, distressed, reached down with his spotted,

  dimpled hands

  to the man he took for his servant, oft-times proven

  friend,

  and urged him up to his feet. “Come, come,” the king

  said, half-

  embarrassed, half-alarmed. “Do I look like a priest?”

  He laughed,

  his heart shaken by the sudden worship of a household

  familiar.

  He quickly put it out of mind. “But yes; yes it’s true,

  we’ve seen

  some times, true enough! Disaster after disaster!”

  He laughed

&nb
sp; more firmly, calming. His bleared eyes took in the river winding below, as smooth and clean as new-cut brass, past dark trees, shaded rocks, bright wheat. In the

  soft light

  of late afternoon it seemed a place the gods had

  blessed,

  had set aside for the comfort of his old age. Dark walls, vine-locked, hinted some older city’s fall.

  He tipped

  his head, considered the sky, put on a crafty look. They say, ‘Count no man happy until he’s dead, beyond all change of Fortune.’” He smiled again, like a

  merchant closing

  his money box. “Quite so, quite so! But the axiom has its converse: ‘Set down no man’s life as tragedy till the day he’s howled his way to his bitter grave.’ ”

  He chuckled,

  a sound automatic as an old-man actor’s laugh, or

  a raven’s.

  He’d ruled long, presiding, persuading. Each blink,

  each nod

  was politics, the role and the man grown together

  like two old trees.

  Then, solemn, he squeezed one eye tight shut, his head drawn back. He scowled like a jeweller of thirty

  centuries hence

  studying the delicate springs and coils of a strange

  timepiece,

  one he intended to master. He touched the old slave’s

  arm.

  “The gods may test their creatures to the rim of

  endurance—not

  beyond. So I’ve always maintained. What man could

  believe in the gods

  or worship them, if it were otherwise?” He chuckled

  again,

  apologetic, as if dismissing his tendency toward bombast. “In any case,” he said, “our luck’s

  changing.

  I give you my word.” He nodded, frowning, hardly glancing at the husk from which the god peeked

  out

  as the rim of a winecup peeks from the grave of the

  world’s first age.

  The spying, black-robed power leered on, wringing his hands in acid mockery of the old servant’s love.

  Whatever shadows had crossed

  the king’s mind, he stepped out free of them. Tentatively, he smiled once more, his lips like a

  woman’s,

  faintly rouged, like his cheeks. His bald head glowed like polished stone in the failing light. A breeze, advancing ahead of the storm, tugged at his heavy skirts and picked at his beard. “It’s difficult, God knows,”

  he said,

  “to put those times behind us: Oidipus blind and wild, Jokasta dead, Antigone dead, high-chambered Thebes yawning down like a ship in flames… Don’t think

  I haven’t

  brooded aplenty on that. A cursed house, men say; a line fated to the last leaf on the last enfeebled branch. It’s a dreadful thought,

  Ipnolebes.

  I’m only human. I frighten as easy as the next man. I won’t deny that I’ve sat up in bed with a start,

  sometimes,

  shaking like a leaf, peering with terrified, weeping eyes at the night and filling the room with a frantic rush

  of prayers—

  ‘Dear gods, dear precious-holy-gods …’ —Nevertheless, I can’t believe it. A man would be raving mad to think the luculent powers above us would doom us willy-nilly, whether we’re wicked or virtuous, proud or not. No, no! With all due respect, with all due love for Oidipus and the rest, such thoughts are the sickness of faulty

  metaphysics.”

  The king stared at the darkening sky, his soft hands folded, resting on his belly. Again he closed one eye and reached for the old slave’s arm. “I do not mean

  to malign

  the dead, you understand. But working it through in

  my mind

  I’ve concluded this: the so-called curse has burned

  itself out.”

  He paused, thought it over, then added, as if with a

  touch of guilt,

  “No curse in the first place, actually. They were tested

  by the gods

  and failed. Much as I loved them all, I’m forced to

  say it.”

  He shook his head. They were stubborn. So they went

  down raging to the grave

  as Oidipus rages yet, they tell me, stalking the rocks of his barren island, groping ahead of himself with

  a stick,

  answering cries of gulls, returning the viper’s hiss, tearing his hair, and the rest. Well, I’m a different breed of cat. Not as clever, I grant—and not as noble,

  either—

  but fit to survive. I’ve asked far less than those did. I ask for nothing! I do my duty as a king not out of pride in kingship, pleasure in the awesome power

  I wield,

  but of necessity. Someone must rule, and the bad luck’s

  mine.

  Would Kreon have hanged himself, like poor Jokasta?

  She was

  unfortunate, granted. But there have been cases, here

  and there,

  of incest by accident. She set her sights too high,

  it seems.

  An idealist. Couldn’t bend, you know. And Antigone

  the same.

  All that—great God!—for a corpse, a few maggots, a passing flock of crows! Well, let us learn from their

  sad

  mistakes. Accept the world as it is. Manipulate the possible. “

  Strange…

  “I’ve wondered sometimes if the gods were aware

  at all of those terrible, noble deeds, those fiery

  orations—

  Oidipus blind on the steps, Antigone in the tomb,

  Jokasta

  claiming her final, foolish right to dignity.”

  He covered his mouth with his hand and squinted.

  He said, voice low:

  “Compare the story of the perfect bliss of ancient

  Kadmos,

  founder of the line, with Harmonia, whose marriage

  Zeus

  himself came down to attend. King Kadmos—

  Kosmos, rightly—

  loved so well, old legends claim, that after his perfect joy in life—his faultless rule of soaring Thebes, great golden city where for many

  centuries

  nothing had stirred but the monstrous serpent

  Kadmos slew—

  the gods awarded him power and Joy after life,

  Zeus filled

  his palace with lightning-bolts, and the well-matched

  pair was changed

  to two majestic serpents, now Lady and Lord of all the Dead. So, surely, all who are good get recompense. If Oidipus did not—hot-tempered and vain—or

  haughty Jokasta …

  —But let it be. I don’t mean to judge them, you

  understand.

  They behaved according to their natures. Too good for

  the world.” He nodded.

  The wind came up. The sky overhead was as

  dark-robed

  as the god. Old Kreon pursed his lips as if the storm had taken him unawares. A spatter of rainfall came, warm drops, and the king hiked up his skirts and ran,

  his servant

  close behind, for shelter under the portico. The trees bent low, twisting and writhing, their

  parched leaves

  swaying like graygreen witches in a solemn dance.

  The sky

  flashed white. A peal of thunder shook the columned

  house,

  the stamping hoof of Poseidon’s violent horse above, and rain came down with a hiss, splashing the

  flagstones. The king

  breathed deep, a sigh, stretched out his arms. “Rain!” It was as if the gods had sent down rain for his

  pleasure. “God

  bless rain!” The king and his servant laughed and

  hugged themselves,

  watching it fall and listening, breathing the charged air.

&nbs
p; Inside the king’s vast house a hundred servants

  padded

  softly from room to room, busy at trivial chores, scrubbing, polishing, repairing—the unimportant lives reamed out of time by the names of kings. Slaves, the children of far-famed palaces broken by war, moved through the halls of Kreon’s palace carrying

  flowers,

  filling the smoke-black vases that darkened the royal

  chambers,

  driving away the unpleasant scents of humanness— sweat, the king’s old age, the stink of beloved dogs, stale wine, chamberpots, cooking. Eyes on the floor,

  young men

  of fallen houses from Africa to Asia moved silently opening doors to admit the lightning smell—

  then,

  eyes on the floor, soundless as jungle birds, moved on. The rumble of thunder, the dark murmur of rain,

  came in.

  A young blond slave with eyes as gray as the

  North Sea

  paused in the grillwork shadow of columns, his head

  lowered,

  peering intently, furtively, out toward distant hills where shafts of sunlight burst, serene, mysterious, through deep blue glodes; the shafts lit up the far-off

  trees,

  the rims of the hills, like silver threads in a tapestry. He stood unmoving except for one hand reaching out, as if for support, to a great white marble chair afire with figures—goddesses, nymphs, dryads, unicorns, heroes of ancient tales whose names were clouded in

  mists

  long before the sculptor carved the stone. The figures burgeoned from one another—arms, legs, wings, limp

  horns—

  as if the stone were diseased, as if some evil force inside it meant to consume the high-beamed room with

  shapes,

  fat-bellied, simpering, mindless—shapes to satisfy a Civilization hip-deep in the flattery of wealth and influence, power to the edges of the

  world. The slave

  moved his hand, as if in pain, infinite disgust, on fat breasts sweetly nippled, polished buttockses, the dwarf-pear little penises of smiling boys.

  The distant shafts of sunlight dimmed, died out; the

  hills

  went dark. In the gray garden, rain drummed steadily on the rude, unadorned coffin carved from gray-black

  rock

  to house a dead king’s bones, forgotten founder of a city, ancient pessimist locked away safe in the earth’s stiff

  heart.

  No rune revealed the monarch’s name; no gravid wordshape hinted which god he trusted in.

  The old slave dressed in black, Ipnolebes, dear to