If there was such a thing as thought crime we would all be in jail, because even if we are incapable of murder – or any kind of real evil - there are times when each of us might flirt with the idea of what it would be like to rid ourselves of the person who has taken something from us, be it a lover, money or livelihood; the only free people would be those who were incapable of thought. Dead people, for instance.

The “you” of the poem is a woman whose husband has found someone to replace her; we can tell because she harbours murderous thoughts about her love rival. In her dream her solution is to pull a gun from her handbag, which is a very modern and effective end to the object of her hatred.

Awake, the woman is Medea. In Greek mythology Medea’s husband, Jason, was lined up to marry Creusa (also known as Glauce), who’s father, Creon, banished Medea to effect the union. As legend has it, Medea pleaded for an extra day before her departure – one should always be wary of requests made by a woman who is about to be severed from her husband/previous life/worldly belongings or source of income. Medea used this extra day to great effect, dipping a dress and crown in poison and sending them to her rival as wedding gifts. When Creusa slipped on the dress the poison was absorbed through her skin. The young princess was too naive to imagine any ulterior motive behind the gifts.

Having woken from her dream of a quick, clean, modern kill, Medea graphically visualises her revenge as it must occur. We are taken for a crawl under Creusa’s skin as she begins to itch. We know that from the moment she senses the first prickle she is already doomed: joy becomes fear, fear becomes desperation; the awareness of inevitable death must fill the last agonising moments of her life.

Comparisons in pain are identified so that we may grasp them (like nettles); Creusa feels as if she has “lice with the teeth of bats”, and the stings of nettles are all over her body. Medea’s revenge on Creusa is also revenge on Jason for deserting her and his children. To harm him, she will harm those around him.

Because Jason “prefers” the “cool girl” who is the princess, to Medea herself, who is fiery and volatile, Medea’s satisfaction is increasingly evident in the last lines, which describe how the “cool girl” is reduced to a “twisting and leaping” creature that drips with flame and screams in pain; she is now far more fiery than Medea ever could be.

Medea, having murdered Creusa, who died in the poisonous flames that also engulfed her father when he vainly attempted to save her, then killed her two children by Jason, perhaps so that he might feel the extraordinary pain of their loss.

Myths may vary, but in all of them Medea is a classical bunny boiler, prepared to kill off the innocent, whose lives are not hers to forfeit, to punish others who deserve no such anguish. She is self-absorbed to the exclusion of all else, including her own children.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

The Gift
by Vicki Feaver ( The Book of Blood, Cape Poetry)

You see her in the street
and pull a gun out of your handbag.

That’s in a dream.

Awake, you’re Medea: imagining
your husband’s Greek princess
unwrapping your gift
of a wedding dress.

She slips it over her head:
twirling in the mirror, pouting,
swinging her hips, pushing out
her breasts.
Still happy,
still thinking, he loves me,
nothing can ever go wrong;
and loving him more, like meat with salt,
for the wife and children he’s left,
she discovers the crown,
its filigree of gold leaves
trembling and tinkling
as she lifts it onto her head.

Then an itch
on her shoulder, and her finger
under the strap, scratching,
making it worse; and a prickling
in her hair, as if she’s got lice –
but lice with the teeth of bats;
then on belly and buttocks and back
a stinging like rolling in nettles;
and then everywhere the dress
and crown touch, her flesh burning –
so she’s twisting and leaping,
the cool girl he prefers
to his fiery wife, dripping
flame and shrieking.

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