Free Jason and Medeia by John Gardner

tigress slaughters her young, then waits for the
    hunter’s attack.
    We’re all poor fools, poor witless benoms to startle
    a crow
    in the cast-off grandeur of scullery-slaves. I grant the
    wisdom
    of your gloomy people’s prophecy. I howl for justice. Insane! Where’s justice, or beauty, or love? Where
    grounds for the pride
    you charge me with? Childish illusions—not even lies our parents told, but lies we fashioned ourselves in
    the playroom,
    prettily singing to dolls, dead children of sawed-down
    trees.
    How dare I hoot for love, claim honor owed to me? Who in the sky ever promised me love or honor? O,
    the plan
    is plain as day, if anyone cares to read. In the shade of the sweetly laden tree, the fat-sacked snake. Good,
    evil
    lock in the essence of things. The Egyptians know—
    with their great god
    Re, by day the creative sun, by night the serpent, mindless swallower of frogs, palaces. Let me be one with the universe, then: blind creation and blind
    destruction,
    indifferent to birth and death as drifting sand.
    Great gods,
    save me from the childish virgin’s fantasy, purity of
    heart,
    gentleness, courage in a merely created man! We fall in love with the image of a mythic, theandric father,
    domineering
    oakfirm tower of strength, and we find, as our mothers
    found,
    the tower is home to a mouse peeking groundward with
    terrified eyes.
    We teach them to act, or act for them. We teach their
    audaculous hands
    the delicate tricks of love-making, teach their abstract heads the truth about power. They pay us by sliding
    their hands
    up slavegirls’ thighs, or turning the tricks of supremacy on us. And then, when we’re ready to shriek and claw,
    strike back
    with the moon-cold anger of the huntress-goddess,
    absolute
    idea of ice, cold flame of Artemis, they come to us like hurt children, showing the wounds from some
    other woman
    or clever woman’s man, and we’re won again, seduced by the only power on earth more cruel, more viciously
    pure
    of heart than woman, ancient ambiguous garden—
    old monster
    Motherhood.”
    â€œMedeia, stop!” The dim eyes widened
    and the mouth gaped for air. “Media, child!” she
    whispered.
    Abruptly, shaken by the word, Medeia was silent. She
    raised
    her hands to her face, then suddenly crossed to the
    slave and embraced her.
    I understood, squinting at the two, that the word had
    changed her.
    I gradually made out why. She’d all at once remembered what it was to be a child: the inexplicable safety, the sense of sure salvation adults forget. A fact of
    reality,
    like a house, three sheep in a pasture. In the face of
    what she knew
    she had no choice but acceptance, weeping like a child
    again.
    For all her knowledge of mingled evil and good in the
    world,
    it seemed to her (mysterious, baffling) that she held in
    her arms
    the perishable husk of a truth still pure and
    imperishable,
    eternal as Dionysos drinking and singing in the grave. “Now, now,” the old woman whimpered, weeping.
    â€œNow, now, my lady,
    no need for sorrow. All will be well. Have faith!”
    â€œI know,”
    Medeia said, and struggled to believe it for a moment
    longer.
    She drew away, forced a smile, and—seeing that the
    slave
    trembled with weakness—led Agapetlka to a cushioned
    bench
    with a view of the darkened garden, and helped her
    down on it.
    She frowned, studying the old woman, alarmed by her
    gasps,
    the trembling of the dry, gray hands. “All you say is
    true,” she said.
    â€œI have a kind of proof, in fact—” She paused; then,
    softly:
    â€œI’ll show it to you.” Swift, majestic, Medeia was gone from the room. In a moment she was back, carrying
    an object wrapped
    in skins. She laid it on the carved bench by the
    window, moved
    the tall lamps close to Agapetika’s chair, and, taking
    the package
    in her hands again, she carefully unwrapped it. A
    gleam of gold,
    and