CARSON, Anne

Excerpt from The Glassy Essay

Well there are many ways of being held prisoner,

I am thinking as I stride over the moor.

As a rule after lunch mother has a nap

and I go out to walk.

The bare blue trees and bleached wooden sky of April

carve into me with knives of light.

Something inside it reminds me of childhood—

it is the light of the stalled time after lunch

when clocks tick

and hearts shut

and fathers leave to go back to work

and mothers stand at the kitchen sink pondering

something they never tell.

You remember too much,

my mother said to me recently.

Why hold onto all that? And I said,

Where can I put it down?

She shifted to a question about airports.

Crops of ice are changing to mud all around me

as I push on across the moor

warmed by drifts from the pale blue sun.

…..


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What would it be like

to live in a library

of melted books.

With sentences streaming over the floor

and all the punctuation

settled to the bottom as a residue.

It would be confusing.

Unforgivable.

A great adventure.

An Oresteia

…..
CHORUS

Helen! wild mad Helen

you murdered so many beneath Troy.

Now you’ve crowned yourself one final perfect time,

a crown of blood that will not wash away.

Strife walks with you everywhere you go.

KLYTAIMESTRA:

Oh, stop whining.

And why get angry at Helen?

As if she singlehandedly destroyed those multitudes of men.

As if she all alone made this wound in us

…..