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.

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.