This next poem is called "Jason at Eighty."
That's Jason.
He took the-- stole.
He stole the Golden Fleece.
He steals the Golden Fleece.
He's about 20 then, maybe 18.
Medea helped him.
[? Degrando ?] and Argo and all that stuff.
Lots of heroes pulling the oars.
And then he becomes King of Corinth.
He fools around a lot, and then he betrays Medea,
the one thing he said he cannot, he's promised not to do.
She's a witch.
She's very tough, and she frightens him.
And then because of this, she takes her revenge,
and he's kicked out of Corinth.
He's about 40.
He's got about eight kids.
The Corinthians stoned about three of them.
And then later, they pay one of those playwrights that
changed the history to write.
Anyway, Medea was written, too.
The play "Medea" was written partly
to say that it was not the Corinthians that
killed those children.
Medea herself.
Anyway, for the next 40 years, Jason wandered all over Greece.
A very unhappy fellow.
And then finally he decides to commit suicide.
He's going to go back to where the Argo is beached,
and he's going to do it there if things don't work out,
which is what this poem is about.
There's a little, a minor joke.
The place where the Golden Fleece was
and where Medea lived, the country of Colchis,
is the modern-day Russian province of Georgia
where Stalin lived.
Stalin the Medea came from the same town,
more or less, which always seemed appropriate.
"Jason at Eighty."
After 40 years of being kicked around Greece,
Jason returned to the Isthmus of Corinth
where the Argo had been beached.
Golden ship with 50 oars, made with seasoned timber
from Mount Pelion.
Jason sat down by the ship and took
from his pouch a small rag, which he unwrapped
to reveal a minuscule sliver of vanity,
like a small lump of coal or crystal knife
that flickered in the sunlight.
Peering into this last remnant of self-love,
Jason considered his past glories, by then
so far in the past he had to hear
them sung about before he could say, yes, that's it,
that's how it happened.
But slowly, he recalled the yoking
of the fire-breathing bulls, sowing the field
with dragon's teeth, the theft of the Golden Fleece,
as he chased one shining temptation after another.
Think of the mistakes that young man made.
Handsome, a good family, educated in the best schools,
he had never anticipated failure.
Therefore, when his devious uncle
sent him to fetch the ram's fleece from Colchis,
nothing had seemed easier.
He hired himself a boat.
I'm sorry.
He hired himself a crew, bought the best boat.
And despite mistake after stupid mistake,
he always squeaked through, depending
on those with more brains to save him
from the jams in which he found himself, whether Hercules,
Orpheus, or Medea, that dolt daughter of Colchis,
whose other most famous citizen was Stalin.
In reward, Jason received the kingdom of Corinth.
No matter that he was married to a witch; had broken oaths
and left behind the tale of pillage
which, if he hadn't committed, he had certainly condoned;
had slept with every woman he could catch,
and thought her well repaid if she could bear his breath.
Jason was the kind of man who, if he fell from a window,
would land in a passing wagon of hay.
The soldier, whose breast pocket Bible stops the fatal bullet.
After a youth of self-indulgence, good luck,
and cheering crowds, he must have felt badly tricked
when his world collapsed simply because he cheated on Medea
and broke his word to the gods.
How could he have thought that was the line not to be crossed?
He, who had crossed so many.
But in no time, his new girlfriend went up in smoke.
His sons were slaughtered.
And Jason found himself stripped of his crown
and bustled from Corinth, without so much
as a toothbrush, reference, or casual goodbye.
The gate slammed shut.
Guards on the walls tossed down a few rocks.
And Jason wound up on the outside
forever, left to fend for himself,
the one thing he could not do for the next 40 years.
He was hounded from city to city as he sought out
old cronies who refused to help, or even see him.
He lived as a beggar, an outcast,
whose only treasure was that tiny sliver of vanity, which
he carried with him like a lump of coal or crystal knife
with which to gouge and torment himself.
But eventually, he returned to the Isthmus of Corinth.
And as Jason crouched down within the shadow of the Argo,
scratching himself and muttering complaints,
he took out that smidgen of vanity and unwrapped it.
And oh, it was battered, and barely gave off a shine.
But as he peered into its black corners,
it began to twinkle and generate a slight light, which
at last was bright enough to blind him
to the bad parts with the trade promises and comrades forsworn.
And despite his eighty years and judgment of the gods,
Jason told himself that he was still a hero,
and that he, who had been scorned,
should now scorn all the world by assuming his punishment
and taking his own life.
And staring up at the Argo glittering
in the late afternoon sun, Jason grabbed
the rope, knotted a noose, and flung it
over the prow of the ship.
And it's this that makes him great.
Not the girls and good times and flashing
acts of bravado, but that forty years of punishment
had taught him zip.
That despite hardship and all the evidence to the contrary,
Jason still thought he could escape the world's sentence
by hurling his ego furiously against it,
like a rock through a plate-glass window.
But the world, here in the form of the Argo herself,
would have none of it.
And as Jason cranked up his courage
to hang himself in a last gesture of self-assertion,
the Argo shuttered, rolled out of the sunlight,
toppled, and crushed Jason, a puny figure,
standing in the sand.