“Some of the thralls were busied with a mighty bull, others with the axe were cleaving dry billets, and others heating with fire water for the baths; nor was there one who relaxed his toil, serving the king. Meantime Eros passed unseen through the grey mist, causing confusion, as when against grazing heifers rises the gadfly, which oxherds call the breese. And quickly beneath the lintel in the porch he strung his bow and took from the quiver an arrow unshot before, messenger of pain. And with swift feet unmarked he passed the threshold and keenly glanced around”.
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, Book III.
I
A rare white-coral beach. I ask the traveler sitting beside me if he is French. “I’m English”, he says, “but in every single trip they ask me that, if I’m French”- “Why?”, I ask, surprised. “Je ne sais pas”.
II
Dragged by dozens of men, the ship rolls over the sands of the desert, green and crisp like crystals of olivine. Jason, almost naked, has also lost his only sandal.
III
We have to go down by lava steps, and in the heart of the mountain the wet cold denies the place where we are, and from time to time we have to crawl by tunnels full of mud in which the hardened lava forms stalactites that could easily tear our clothes.
IV
Nightmare in the deep of the night: Jason has covered his face with mud, maybe with saffron. Under the long light of the lamps, the bearded hero looks as red-haired as Achilles, as blond as a wheat spirit, as tall as Polifemo. His only iris is flashing, deep blue, verdigris, bright golden.
V
If the seagull can pass between the rocks, the ship will cross as well. The seagull passes –a few feathers come off with a strike— and then the ship sails on.
VI
Ballet terrible. Medea has sent to Creusa a present: a mantle, a wedding dress. The Furies, with their green locks and their membranous, purplish bat wings, burst out laughing.
VII
Seven hundred miles out to sea, the salt burns the skin so badly that, at a certain point, one only thinks about calming it with some sweet water.
VIII
The castle walls are concentric circles. Between two towers, the yard looks like a bullfighting ring. All around the serpent-tree, men with crimson cloaks gyrate.
There are two white presences, as made of sifted flour: an Alano dog, a woman.
IX
The gate of the Blue Rocks closes forever, because a ship has been able to cross it. “This door was intended only for you”.
X
I am not wearing a panther skin but a turtle one: an abandoned shell that I use like a medieval knight would carry his armor.
XI
Jason has become an English cartographer. It is dinner time, but all what is in the plate vibrates and dances. Around the wooden table, his mates regurgitate fantastic animals. Jason, as if he were Jonah, is devoured and given back by a blue dragon.
XII
Let us scrape off the sheepskins, let us wash the sands, let us wait with patience that things fall down by their own weight, that the gravel settles, that the gold grains, if they are really there, begin to sparkle.
XIII
Jason goes through Rome. The temple looks like a petrified forest. Its columns have harpy claws. From the hero’s arm hangs the precious skin. The shadow advances from one corner. In another the avenging god watches, and his stare pierces to the bone.
XIV
The serpent licks the hand of Medea, who has given it her sacred herbs as if they were gingerbread. Jason falls on his back, his arms stretched out, his legs opened.
XV
(It is told that, in Colchis, people used to put the sheepskins in the riverbeds and then hang them, full of gold powder, ready to welcome the thieves).
Montevideo, 2017.
