Saturday, January 10, 2015

Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions by Anne Carson


It’s good to be neuter.
             I want to have meaningless legs.
                          There are things unbearable.
                                       One can evade them a long time.
Then you die.

The ocean reminds me
             of your green room.
                          There are things unbearable.
                                       Scorn, princes, this little size
of dying.

My personal poetry is a failure.
             I do not want to be a person.
                          I want to be unbearable.
                                       Lover to lover, the greenness of love.
Cool, cooling.

Earth bears no such plant.
             Who does not end up
                          a female impersonator?
                                       Drink all the sex there is.
Still die.

I tempt you.
             I blush.
                         There are things unbearable.
                                      Legs, alas.
Legs die.

Rocking themselves down,
             crazy slow,
                          some ballet term for it —
                                       fragment of foil, little
spin,
             little drunk,
                          little do,
                                       little oh,
                                                    alas.