And now all around me a slum lurched up till it
blocked out the darkness—
or became the darkness—staggering, skewbald. No
longer did the wind
come raging like a lion at the canyon mouth, or
dancing, as if
under pines and cedars, or flying swiftly, whistling and
wailing,
spluttering its anger, or crashing like thunder, whirling,
tumbling
in confusion, shaking rocks, striking trees—no longer
was the wind
so godly, nor the night so godly that sent it; but
rattling it came,
wheeling, violent, from wynds and alleys, poking in
garbage cans,
stirring up the dust, fretting and worrying. It crept into
holes
and knocked on doors, scattered sand and old plaster,
swirled ashes,
muddled in the dirt and tossed up bits of filth. It sidled through tenement windows, crept under double- and
triple-locked doors
of furnished rooms. I huddled, raising my collar
against it,
clamping my lips against street dust and holding my
poor battered hat on.
And then all at once I was lurching in a rickety
vehicle
through streets so crowded the horses pulling had
nowhere to move—
fat black warhorses with ears laid flat and with
steep-rolling eyes,
snorting and stamping irritation at the crowd, but
obedient to the driver.
Staring at his back, I knew by the tingle at the nape
of my neck
that I’d seen him before and should fear him. He turned
his head and I saw
his thick spectacles and smile—my mirror image,
my double!
With the crowd packed tight around us, I had nowhere
to flee.
Despite the ragged, churning horde, the chariot was making
some headway.
It rolled in silence, the wheels climbing over small
stones, bits of rubble,
as if struggling onward with conscious effort, the driver
never swerving
to the left or right, like stoop-shouldered, cool-eyed
Truth in a frayed
black coat and hat. We ascended a hill made strange
by haze,
its upper part not dazzling, exactly, its lower region not exactly obscure—dimly visible, impossible to name, changing, shadowy, deep as the ancestor of all
that lives,
awesome and common. The chariot wheels seemed to
move in old ruts;
the wind, the smell of the horses, the writing on the
chariot walls—
hieroglyphs smoothed down to nothing, as if by blind
men’s fingers—
had all a mysterious sameness.
“You’re enjoying your vision?” he said and smiled again, showing all his teeth.
The strangest vision that ever was seen in this world,”
I said.
He laughed. “No doubt it seems so,” he said. “So each
man’s vision
seems to him. And no doubt it seems a profound
revelation?”
“Yes indeed!” I said, inexplicably furious. He grinned,
tipped his hat,
icily polite. Then, seeing my swollen hand, he remarked, The vision has rules, I hope?” He smiled. “It’s not one
of those maddening—”
“Certainly not!” I said. “It’s an absolute tissue of rules, though not all of them, of course, at this stage—”
“Yes, of course, of course.”
He seemed both myself and, maddeningly, my superior, and deadly. He tapped his chin. “So you’re piercing to
the heart of things.”
“Exactly,” I said. He beamed. “Excellent! —And there’s
something there?
The heart of the matter is not, as we’ve feared …”
He smiled, mock-sheepish.
I tried in panic to think what it was that it was
teaching me,
and my head filled with ideas that were clear as day,
but jumbled—
images that had no words for them. Somewhat
disconcerted,
I concentrated, clarifying what I saw by explaining to the stranger as I looked. And now suddenly things
grew much plainer.
I now understood things never before expressed—
inexpressible—
though everywhere boldly hinted, so plain, so absurdly
simple
that a fool if he learned the secret would laugh aloud.
I saw
three radiant ladies like pure forms gloriously bright—
three ladies
and one, as separate roads may wind toward one
same city,
or one same highway be known by separate names.
The floor
of the chariot extended to the rims of the universe,
wheeling away
like a rush of silver spokes devised by the finest of a
rich king’s
silversmiths, a man so devoted that he never looks up, and never considers the value of his work, but with
every stroke
proclaims the majesty of silver as the wings of an eagle
praise wind.
There the three ladies danced like dreams in the
limitless skull
of the Unnamable. And the first held a book with great
square pages.
Her name was Vision, and her tightly woven robe
was Light.
The second lady held a wineglass to me and smiled
at my shyness,
and when I saw her smile I remembered I’d met her
a thousand times,
in a thousand unprepossessing shapes, and my heart
was as glad
as the heart of a lonely old man when he sees his son.
Her name
was Love, and her robe was Gentleness. The third
bright dancer,
nearer than the rest and so plain of face that I laughed
when I saw her,
was lady Life, and her attire was Work. They danced,
and their music—
one with the dancers as a miser’s mind grows one
with his guineas
or the soul of a man on the mountain and the soul of
the mountain are one,
subject and object in careful minuet—was Selflessness. I stared dumbfounded at the universal simplicity and the man at my side stared with me, unconvinced.
The whole wide vault
of the galaxies choired, rumbling with the thunder,
what Life sang (Give),
and Love (Sympathize), and Vision (Control).
I laughed, and the sound was a quake that banged through the bed of Olympos
(the stranger vanished
like a shadow at the coming of a torch), and Love
was transformed to Aphrodite,
Vision to Athena, and Life to Queen Hera in an
undulant cloak
of snakes. I shrank in dismay—all around me to the
ends of the vision,
the numberless, goggle-eyed gods. Beside me in the
palace, a voice said,
“Calm yourself!” and a hand touched me. “Goddess!”
I whispered,
for though she remained no clearer to my sight than
the morning memory
of a dream, I knew her, and at once I was filled with
an eerie calm
as gentle as the calm of sleeping lovers or the solemn
stillness
of wrecked and abandoned towns. The goddess said,
“Listen!” and raised
her shadowy arm to point.
On his high throne Zeus sat motionless, cold and remote as the Matterhorn, his right fist raised to his bearded chin. His left hand rested on the hand
of the queen
on the throne beside him. The beams of his eyes shot
calmly to the heart
of the universe, and he did not shift his gaze when
the goddess
of love came forward and kneeled at his feet,
surrounded by her host
of suivants—gasping old men still crooked with lust,
drooling,
winking obscenely, their flies unbuttoned; middle-aged
women
with plucked eyebrows, smiling serenely past
cocktail glasses,
with eyes artificially eyelashed and slanted, and
propped-up bosoms
exuding the ghostly remains of whole nations of
civet cats;
young lovers crushed-to-one-creature as they staggered
down crowded streets
lunging through fish-smells and sorrow, from bed to bed.
Aphrodite lifted her hands, dramatic, and cried, “O mighty Lord, hear the prayer of your sorrowful Aphrodite! I’ve waited, faithful as a child, remembering your promise. In this
same hall
you swore that Jason and Medeia would be known
forever as the truest,
most pitiful of lovers, saints of Aphrodite. Yet
every hour
their once-fierce love grows feebler, turning toward hate.
Queen Hera
revels in my shame, egging him on toward betrayal
of Kreon, and Athena bends all her wit to dredging
up excuses
in his fickle heart for trading Medeia for Pyripta. If all you promised you now withdraw, you know I’m
powerless to stop you;
but understand well: fool though you think me—
all of you—
you’ll never fool me twice with your flipflop
gudgeon-lures.”
The love goddess closed her lovely fists at her sides,
half rising,
and with bright tears rushing down her cheeks,
exclaimed:
“I’ll throw myself in the sea! Take warning! We gods
may be
indestructible, but still we can steal death’s outer
semblance,
stretched out rigid and useless in the droppings of
whales.” At the thought
of dark desolation at the slimy bottom of the world,
the goddess
was so moved she could speak no more, but sobbed into
her fingers, shaking,
and her worshippers bleated in chorus till the floor of
the palace was slick
with tears. But Zeus, like an old quartz mountain, was
visibly unmoved.
“I’ve promised you what I’ve promised,” he said.
“Be satisfied.”
“But that’s not all,” she said, eyes wide, a bright
blush rising
in her plump cheeks. “I find I’m mocked not only
by Hera
and Athena, but even by Artemis—she who claims to be so pure! I begged her, like a suppliant, to charge
the spirit
of Kreon’s daughter with a fiery love of chastity. And what did the cruel and malicious thing do? Went
straight to Medeia
to stir up strife in marriage I Let Artemis explain to
the gods
her purpose in this, and by what right she behaves
so horribly.”
Zeus said, “If Artemis wishes to speak let her speak.”
But the goddess
at my side said nothing. ‘Then I will speak,” said
Zeus crossly,
disdaining to shift his glance to tearful Aphrodite.
“The fire
of zeal has never had a purpose. It is what it is, simply, and any ends it may stumble to it’s indifferent to. As for Medeia, make no mistake, nothing on earth is more pure—more raised from self to selfless
absolute—
than a woman betrayed. For all their esteem,
immortal gods
follow like foaming rivers the channels available
to them.
Enough. Annoy us no more, Goddess.” She backed off,
curtsying,
glancing furtively around to see who might be snickering
at her.
And now gray-eyed Athena spoke, the goddess of cities and goddess of works of mind. In her shadow professors
crouched,
stern and rebuking, with swollen red faces and
pedantic hearts;
lawyers at the edge of apoplexy from righteous
indignation;
poets and painters with their pockets crammed full of
sharp scissors and knives;
and ministers cunning in Hebrew. With a smile
disarming and humorous—
but I knew her heart was troubled—she said, “Father
of the Gods,
no one has firmer faith than I in your power to keep all promises—complex and contradictory
as at times they seem.” She glanced at the goddess
of love and smiled,
then added, her tone too casual, I thought, and her teeth
too bright,
“But I cannot deny, my lord, that my mind’s on fire
to understand
how you can hope to keep this one, for surely your
promise to me,
that Jason shall rule in Corinth, must cancel the
opposing promise
that Jason will cleave to Medeia. I beg you, end
our suspense
and explain away this mystery, for my peace of mind.”
For the first time, the beams of the eyes of Zeus
swung down
and he met the gaze of his cunning child Athena.
He said,
his voice dark beyond sadness, “By murder and agony on every side, by release of the dragons and the burning
of Corinth,
by shame that so spatters the skirts of the gods that
never again
can any expect or deserve man’s praise—by these
cruel means
I juggle your idiot demands to their grim
So he spoke,
and spoke no more. The goddesses gazed at each other,
aghast,
then looked again, disbelieving, at Zeus.
It was Hera who spoke, queen of goddesses. “Husband, your words cut deep,
as no doubt
you intend them to. But I know you too well, and I
think I know
your disgusting scheme. You told us at the time of
your promises
that our wishes were selfish and cruel. In your bloated
self-righteousness,
you imagine you’ll shock us to shame by these terrible
threats, pretending
we’ve brought these horrors on ourselves. My lord,
we’re not such children
as to tumble to that! The cosmos is fecund with
ways and means,
and surely you, who can see all time’s possibilities— such, if I’m not mistaken, is your claim—surely you
could find
innumerable tricks to provide us with all we desire,
without
this monstrous bloodbath and, at last, this toppling of
the whole intent
of our three wishes. O Master of Games, I remain
unpersuaded
by your floorless, roofless nobility. You want no more
or less than we do:
triumph and perso
nal glory. It’s to spite us you do these things. Like the spiteful bigot who
dances in the street
when the brothel burns and the wicked run screaming
and flaming to the arms
of Death, you dance in your hell-cavern mind
at the terrible sight
of hopes-beneath-your-lofty-dignity shattered, proved
shameful.
Well I—for one—I’ll not bend to that high-toned
dogmatism!
Bring on your death’s-heads! Kindle your hellfires!
Unleash the shrieks
of humanity enraged! Prate, preach, pummel us!
I’ll not be fooled:
from rim to rim of the universe, all is selfishness
and wrath.”
So saying, she struggled to free her hand from the
arm of the throne
and Zeus’s grip, but his hand lay on hers as indifferent
and heavy
as a block of uncut stone. Then Hera wept. And before my baffled eyes her form grew uncertain, changing
and shadowy,
as if hovering, tortured, between warring potentials,
and one of them
was Life. I remembered Phineus.
Gently and softly Athena spoke. Her eyes were cunning, watching
her father
like a hawk. “My lord, your words have upset us,
as you see. If we speak
in haste, our words not carefully considered, I’m sure
your wisdom
forgives us. Yet perhaps the queen of goddesses is right
after all
that there may be some way you’ve missed that could
lead to a happier issue—
satisfaction of our wishes without such deplorable
waste.”
“There’s none,” said Zeus. She glanced at him, sighed,
then began again.
“Perhaps now—knowing what our wishes entail—we
might modify them.”
She glanced at Aphrodite. The goddess of love with
a fiery glance
at Hera said, “It was you—you two—if you care
to remember,
who begged me to start this love affair. But now,
just like that,
I’m to turn my back on it. “Run along, Aphrodite, dear, you’ve served your purpose.’ ” She stretched out an arm
to Zeus. “I ask you,
would you put up with such treatment? Am I some
scullery-slave,
some errand runner? What have they ever done for me?”
Zeus sighed,
said nothing. Athena pleaded, “But what are we to do?
Am I
to grovel at the sandals of this cosmic cow? And
even if I did,
would Hera do it?” The queen of goddesses flashed,
“Don’t be fooled!
If tragedy strikes, there’s no one to blame but Zeus!”
Then they waited,
leaving the outcome to Zeus. He stared into space. At last he lowered his fist slowly from his chin. “Let it be,”