coming more
to life, with each fresh gust. No one could explain. The
huge boy
grinned, managing the steering oar as Tiphys alone could do, or so we’d thought.
“Then up from the magic beams
of the Argo, singing at our feet, there came new tones,
a majestic
hymn, as if all the choiring trees of Athena’s grove, and all the gods, and all the fish of the sea had come
together to sing
their praise of the queen of goddesses.
Hera never sleeps!
She fills the world
with beauty, goodness, danger. At a word
from her the gods lure men to the highest
pinnacles of feeling. By her command
the wolf drags down the lamb, and the shepherd
shoots the wolf,
and the adder joyfully strikes at the shepherd’s heel
She is never spent! She moves
like light, from atom to atom, forever changing
forever
the same.
Queen Hera
consumes the land and sea with beauty
and danger. Stirs
the dragon in his lair (vermilion scaled),
awakens the timorous butterfly,
the many-hued heart of man.
She never rests:
Poseidon is her servant, the Earth-shaker,
and Artemis, huntress;
and Love and Death and Wisdom are all in her retinue.
Sparrows, hawks, bulls, deer, trees, roses—
Hera is in them!
Songbirds whistle on the eaves: Praise Hera!
Exalt her, hills and rivers!
Praise Hera!
Honor her, kingdoms!
Praise Queen Hera!
Honor her all that soars, or walks, or creeps.
Thus sang the Argo, Athena’s instrument;
and suddenly something was clear: It was not my will
resolving
the many wills, and not Orpheus’ will, but a thing more
complex.
We on the Argo were the head, limbs, trunk of a
creature, a living thing
larger than ourselves (it was Amykos’ idea), a thing
puzzling out
its nature, its swim through process. What powered its
mammoth heart
was not my will or any other man’s, but the fact that
by chance
it had stumbled into existence. Confused, diverse desires hurled the beast north to Aietes’ city: my scheme of
the fleece,
however important to all of us once, was a passing
dream,
less than a ghost of a word in the gloom of the beast’s
weird mind
(flicker of a bat, frail hint of order, some pious saw). ‘We’re after the fleece,’ the black leviathan could
remind itself,
lumbering north, old lightning in its eyes, its monster
fins
stretched wide, groping into darkness. But it wasn’t the
fleece we sought.
Nor anything else. The mind of the beast had no center
—had only
its searchingness, its existence. Old Hera was in us—
and in
the mysterious ships behind us, travelling in our wake,
still following
hungrily, booming, from another time and place. (Say it was a dream.) We were—and the black-scarped
ships behind us were—
the world according to Phineus: cavern of warring gods, the delicate crust of reason. Thanatos. Eros. And had no choice, then, but submission: submit and obey was
the beast’s
cruel law. —And if it was tyrannical law, unsubtle as
a fist,
it was freedom, too: we were children in the shelter of
the kind, mad father’s
yard. I had cracked my wits too long on why we were
driving
north, affronting all reason. It was merely the creature’s
will.
It was our business, our custom, our destiny. Too long
I’d bathed
in the torrents, streams, still pools of each novel emotion.
No more
such lunacy! Sensation, sleep! Imagination, give up your stolen chair, cold throne of the terat. I was, I saw at last, the demon’s agent, merely—enslaved as the cords in an orator’s throat, or as the Argonauts, turning in the wind of my words, were tools of my
but Orpheus. I would overwhelm him as surely as once we struck down, not out of hate but by force of destiny, poor Kyzikos, King of the Doliones, or Amykos, famous boxer who proved inferior and therefore died, as later, Polydeukes died of his weakness, excessive humanity,
tainted
blood.
‘The ghost fleet gloomed behind us, assenting. And then
it vanished. If there was some meaning in that, we
evaded it;
blinked twice, stared fiercely ahead.
“We’d come to Kallikhorus;
we passed the tomb of Sthenelos, son of Aktor, who
fought
with Herakles in his Amazon raid. His dusky ghost rose up and signalled to the ship in his warlike panoply, moonlight gleaming on the four plates and the scarlet
crest
of his helmet. We brailed the sail. The old seer
Mopsos said
we must stay, put the ghost to rest. I was not in a
mood to debate,
still half dazed by my insight into the beast we’d
become
a part of—Mopsos an impulse, an instinct, a pressure
not to be
resisted. I gave the order. We cast our hawsers ashore, paid honor to the tomb. Libations; sheep. Sang praise
of the ghost
invisible except for his armor. And then set forth once
more
on the sea. At dawn, came round the Cape of Karambis, and all that day and on through the night we rowed
the Argo
north along endless shores. So came to the Assyrian
coast,
and took on water, sheep, recruits—three friends of
Herakles
stranded by him long since, when he fought with the
Amazons.
They bore no grudge, as was right. We took them
aboard in haste—
the wind brooked no delay. So, that same afternoon, rounded the headland that cantled above us like a
stone sheltron
guarding the Amazons’ harbor. The old men told us a
curious
story of the place. They said that once there Herakles captured the daughter of Ares, Hippolyta’s younger sister Melanippa. He took her by ambush, intending to rape
her,
but Hippolyta gave him her own resplendent cestus by
way
of ransom, and when he saw her naked, that beautiful
virgin—
in later days she was Theseus’ queen—the great oaf
wept,
all his virtue in his senses. The queen wouldn’t lie with
him;
the man couldn’t think what to do. He might have won,
then and there,
his war, but he backed away from her—fled in confusion
to the woods—
abandoning the beautiful sisters, his half-wit head full
of grandiose
booms, such as Innocence, Honor, Dignity, Virtue.
—Not so
when Theseus came. He’d seen a great deal—had walked
through Hades
for his friend, when Peirithoös was taken. He knew the
meaninglessness of things.
Brought the Amazon forces to check and might, if he
wished,
have slaug
htered them all. He held back. Observed the
naked virgin
on her knees before him, in chains, surrounded by
Akhaian guards,
men in great plumes, their war gear gleaming in the
tent, and said:
‘I’ll speak with her majesty alone.’ They laughed. Who
wouldn’t have laughed? —
but Theseus’ eyes were cool. The guards withdrew. He
said:
‘Queen, don’t answer in haste. I’ve won this dreary war, as you see by the plainest of signs. I could injure
you more, if I wished.
Chained hand and foot, you can hardly resist me. I
could teach you more
than you dream of humiliation. Yet all I’ve done—or
might
do yet—is nothing to the humiliation of life itself, this waste where men are abandoned to the whims of
gods. I’ve seen
what games they play with the dead.’ And he told of
Briareos
with his hundred whirling arms, a beast of prey more
terrible,
more ludicrous, to divine minds, than the hurricane that makes men scurry like squealing rats to shelter,
trembling,
whimpering obscenely, clinging to one another’s bodies
until,
unspeakably, their fear collapses to lust, and under the screaming winds they couple like dogs in a crate. He
told
of the Hydra, from whom the unwoundable dead fly
shrieking, bug-eyed,
chased by the thunderous rumble of the laughing gods.
Told then
of Tityus, whose obscene weight mocks finitude, turns heroes’ powerful thighs to ridiculous sticks, and
told
of pitch-black Prince Dionysos and his soundless dance.
‘All this,’
said Theseus, ‘I have seen. I can abandon you to death and all its foolishness, and follow, in time, as all men must; or we can forestall that mockery for now. Choose what you will. Either way, I grant
you, we’re
not much. We’ve sent our thousands, you and I, to
the cave
to wait for us. It hardly matters how long they wring their shadowy hands and watch. Choose what you will.’
The Amazon
laughed. ‘Nothing of my virgin beauty? Nothing, O king, of my fierce pride, my loyalty? Nothing of how, in the
hall,
passing the golden bowl, my great robes trailing, I
might
adorn your royal magnificence?—Nothing of my breasts,
my thighs?’
Theseus sighed. ‘I’d serve you better than you think.
I have seen
dead women—shadowy thighs, sweet breasts—going out
and away
like a sea.’
“Then, more than by all his talk of Briareos
and the rest, the queen was moved. She said: ‘You do
not fear
I’ll kill you, then, in your bed?’ Old Theseus touched
her chin,
tipped up her face. ‘I fear that, yes.’ And so he left her, and so the war was resolved; she became his queen.
The two
became one creature, a higher organism with meanings
of its own,
groping upward to a troubled kind of sanctity. (All that was later. We knew, at the time the old men told the
tale
of Herakles, nothing of Theseus’ later gains.) I saw, whatever the others saw, one more clear proof of the
beauty
of cool, tyrannical indifference, and the comic stupidity of Herakles’ simpering charity, girlish fright. The future lies, I thought, not with Herakles, howling in the night
for love
of a boy—much less with such boys themselves, sweet
scented, lost.
The future lies with the sons of the Argo’s officers, rowing in furious haste past peace, past every peace, searching out war’s shrill storm of conflicting wills.
“We struck
and plundered, then fled that Amazon land, moved on
to the shores
of the Khalybes, that dreary race that plants no corn, no fruit, never tames an ox. They dig in search of iron, darken the skies with soot. They see no sun or moon, and know no rest. From a mile offshore you can hear
their coughing,
dry as a valley of goats. We took on water and left in haste. We’d seen too much, of late, of death. Yet they were men like ourselves, we knew by the eyes in their
smudged faces,
blacker than Ethiopians’. Surely they had not meant to evolve into this! —But we had no heart to pity or ponder that. Ghost ships passed us. Vast, dark dreams, troubles in the smoky night. Sometimes the strangers
hailed us,
called out questions in a foreign tongue. We bent to
the oars,
pushed on. And so we eluded them.
“We passed the land
of the Tibareni, where men go to bed for their wives in
their time
of labor. He lies there groaning, with his quop of a head
wrapped up,
and his good wife lovingly feeds him, prepares a bath.
We passed
the land of the Mossynoeki, where the people make love in the streets, like swine in the trough; oh, they were a
pretty race,
as gentle as calves. When Orpheus sang to them of
shame, remorse,
of beasts and men, they smiled, blue-eyed, and
applauded his song.
We were baffled; finally amused. We kissed them,
women and men,
and left. Let the gods improve them. And so to the
island of Ares,
where the war god’s birds attacked us. We soon
outwitted them.
“That night old Argus sat on the ground, by the
firelight,
studying the wing of a bird, one of those we’d killed.
His eyes
were slits. ‘Still learning?’ I said. The old man smiled
and nodded.
‘Secrets of Time and Space,’ he said. The gods are
patient.’
I waited. He said no more. His delicate fingers spread the pinions, brighter than silver and gold in that
flickering light.
The bird’s head flopped on its golden neck, beak open,
bright
eyes wide. They had seen the god himself. Now nothing.
I said:
‘It’s old, this creature?’ Argus nodded. ‘Old as the
world is.
Older than the whole long history of man from Jason
down
to the last pale creature crawling in poisonous slime
to his loveless
lair, the cave of his carnage.’ I stared at him, alarmed.
‘Explain.’
Old Argus smiled, looked weary, and made a pass
with his hand.
‘There are no explanations, only structures,’ he said. ‘A structured clutter of adventures, encounters with
monsters, kings …’
He gazed toward sea, toward darkness. The mind of
man—’ he said,
then paused. The thought had escaped him. In the
lapping water, the Argo
sighed. You are caught in irrelevant forms. So I’d heard,
in my dream.
Caught, the black ship whispered. I would make the best
of it.
Tiphys was dead, our pilot, and Idmon, younger of the
seers.
We were left to the steering of a boy, the visions of a
half-cracked witch.
We were better off, could be. We knew where we stood.
“There came
a storm, sudden, from nowhere. We cower
ed in the
trees. Mad Idas
whispered, ‘Go to it! Show your violence, Zeus! We’re
learning!
“Submit and obey,” says the wind, “for I am a wind
from Zeus,
Great Father who beats my head and batters my ass as I whip yours. Submit and obey! Look upward with
cringing devotion
to me just as I do to Zeus, for I am better. Do I not shake your beard? Crack treelimbs over your head?
Sing praise
of Boreas!” ’ Idas’ moustache foamed like the sea, and
his eyes
Jerked more wildly than the branches whipping in the
gale. His brother,
staring out into darkness, made no attempt to hush him. ‘We’re learning, still learning,’ mad Idas howled. He
got up on his knees,
and the gale shot wildly through his robes, sent him out
like a flag. ‘As you
whip us, great Boreas, we the lords of the Argo will whip Aietes’ men—cornhole the king and his counsellors, fuck great ladies! So much for kindness, the hope of the cow!
So much
for equality, soft, nonsensical, sweetness of the
whimsical tit!
We’re learning!’ At a sudden gust, he fell headlong.
Lynkeus reached out
and touched him, without expression. The fierce wind
whistled in our ears.
Orpheus was silent, daunted. If Idas was wrong, it was
not for
Orpheus to say: he was an instrument, merely: a harp
to the fingers
of the gods. (And I was by no means sure he was
wrong.)
“Then came
dawn’s eyes, and we looked out to sea and we saw, to the
east and west,
black wreckage. And we saw a beam in the harbor,
rising and falling,
and men. As they came toward land, we stripped and
went out to them
to help. We drew them to the sandy shore. Four men,
half drowned,
clinging to the splintered beam with fingers stiffened
into claws.
We laid them down by the fire and fed them. Soon as
they could speak,
we asked their race. The sons of Phrixos, they said.
(We were not
surprised. We’d heard from Phineus how we’d meet
with them,
and all their troubles before.) They came from Kolchis,
kingdom
of Aietes, where exiled Phrixos lived. You know the
story:
“The king of the Orkhomenians had two wives. By the first, he had two sons, Phrixos and Helle. When
the first wife
died, and he married the second, that cruel and jealous