Anne Carson

Beginnings are special
because most of them are fake.
The new person you become
with that first sip of wine
was already there.

A cat’s-eye

is outranked only by a steelie. And so they developed an economy of sex

for cat’s-eyes.

Pulling the stick makes my brother happy, thought Geryon. Don’t tell Mom,

said his brother.

Voyaging into the rotten ruby of the night became a contest of freedom

and bad logic.

Come on Geryon.

No.

You owe me

No.

I hate you. I don’t care. I’ll tell Mom. Tell Mom what?

How nobody likes you at school.

Geryon paused. Facts are bigger in the dark. Sometimes then he would descend

to the other bunk

and let his brother do what he liked or else hang in between with his face pressed

into the edge of his own mattress,

cold toes balancing on the bed below.

Geryon would climb back up to his bunk,

recover his pajama bottoms and lie on his back. He lay very straight

in the fantastic temperatures

of the red pulse as it sank away and he thought about the difference

between outside and inside.

Inside is mine, he thought.

That was also the day

he began his autobiography. In this work Geryon set down all inside things

particularly his own heroism

and early death much to the despair of the community. He coolly omitted

all outside things.

Like many a wife I boosted the husband up to Godhood and held him there.
What is strength?
Opposition of friends or family merely toughens it.

Ōe says
many children were told and some believed that when the war was over
the emperor would wipe away their tears
with his own hand.

Lover, merciful one
you write but you
do not come to me. This one my mother did not read.

Rabbis liken Torah to the narrow sex of the gazelle
for whose husband every time
is like the first time.

He was not wrong that sad anthropologist who told us the primary function of writing is to enslave human beings. Intellectual and aesthetic uses came later.

Shall we sharpen our eyes and circle closer to the beauty of the husband—
carefully, for he was on fire.
Under him the floor was on fire,
the world was on fire,
truth was on fire.
Around him green fire blew straight off every tree.
He was almost never sad, a god led him on.
Nor did he doubt his fate which looked as Napoleon used to say like this:
I write myself between worlds.