The Cicerone at Epidaurus
(for B E )
Arms locked in a fireman's carry,
The young men elevate the smiling woman
And bear her like Aphrodite toward
The cicerone in the upper seats
Where he lounges like a country Silenus
In the perfect curve of worn marble,
Retaining heat from the departed sun
In a theater as old as drama, itself
Next to a temple of the healing god,
A place which worshipped perfect bodies
Even when these steps were unworn;
There were those who gimped heavily up them,
The blind led by hired youths, those in litters
And those who crawled, and the deaf who got
Only mask and gesture without music,
Part of and yet not part of healthy cities,
The realm of athletes and ideal gods,
The demos relying on oars and shields
And sound, rational male wholeness,
Whose free and equal citizens excluded
Slaves, women, foreigners, and the maimed,
Who nevertheless keep rising up
Reminding us that power never lasts
And too much faith in reason is
An assurance of catastrophe.
The play begins with modern lights
In modern Greek but close enough
To the old tongue and rhythms that
The cicerone can even mark time
Counting the dactyls and caesurae,
Hearing an echo of Longfellow
But spiced with unaccustomed terror;
Medea is outlandish, dangerous,
Her very name a memory of pillage,
Someone who had betrayed her people,
Given up the fleece and got knocked up
By a hero lover whose passion cooled
As home hove into view and homely things
Blinded his heart; disaster
Comes for those who cannot see
That servants are not clowns, that
Women who have given all can still
Work roots with burning gifts
And stab out life with greater pain
Than birthing caused, that no one
Can be left out of life and thought.
The crowd leaves, the woman must stay
And the cicerone is silent,
And she is silent, but finally he says:
"You asked for a beginning
But this old play in this old place
Is already piled high with second thoughts,
With its own present day
Layered over countless pasts,
As in the high mounds of cities
Uncovered by careful brushes and picks
Down to the lowest campfire ash,
But some stories were old
Even before the first fire,
Especially the one about strangers
Who are always melting into us
Whether we like it or not."
The young men carry her down,
The cicerone gimping behind them,
They place her on her motorized chair
And will not take the offered tip.
