Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson

HE CAME after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a diffi-cult interval for a poet. Born about 650 B.C. on the north coast of

Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

MEANWHILE IN HEAVEN

In those days the police were weak Family was strong

Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the Dog

The red world And corresponding red breezes Went on Geryon did not

Geryon was amazed at himself. He saw Herakles just about every day now. The instant of nature forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life leaving behind just ghosts rustling like an old map. He had nothing to say to anyone. He felt loose and shiny.

Love does not make me gentle or kind, thought Geryon

“How does distance look?” is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless within to the edge of what can be loved. It depends on light.

They continued to sit. They were parked way out on the highway. Cold night smell coming in the windows. New moon floating white as a rib at the edge of the sky.

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.

SPIRIT RULES SECRETLY ALONE THE BODY ACHIEVES NOTHING is something you know instinctively at fourteen and can still remember even with hell in your head at sixteen. They painted this truth on the long wall of the high school the night before departing for Hades.

His grandmother sat at the picnic table eating toast and discussing death.

As in childhood we live sweeping close to the sky and now, what dawn is this.

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

Photography is a way of playing with perceptual relationships. Well exactly. But you don’t need a camera to tell you that. What about stars? Are you going to tell me none of the stars are really there? Well some are there but some burned out ten thousand years ago. I don’t believe that.

Goodnight children, she called in her voice like old coals. May God favor you with dreams.

It was raining on his face. He forgot for a moment that he was a brokenheart then he remembered. Sick lurch downward to Geryon trapped in his own bad apple. Each morning a shock to return to the cut soul. Pulling himself onto the edge of the bed he stared at the dull amplitude of rain. Buckets of water sloshed from sky

We would think ourselves continuous with the world if we did not have moods.

“… I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.…”

“To deny the existence of red is to deny the existence of mystery. The soul which does so will one day go mad.”

a man as beautiful as a live feather.

There are a few smiles, many broken teeth, no anger.

I once loved you, now I don’t know you at all. He does not say this.

There is one thing I want from you. Tell me. Want to see you use those wings.

It is a photograph he never took, no one here took it.

This is for Ancash, he calls to the earth diminishing below. This is a memory of our beauty. He peers down at the earth heart of Icchantikas dumping all its photons out her ancient eye and he smiles for the camera: “The Only Secret People Keep.”

We are amazing beings, Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire. And now time is rushing towards them where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.

S: I saw everything everyone saw I: Well yes S: No I mean everything everyone saw everyone saw because I saw it I: Did they S: I was (very simply) in charge of seeing for the world after all seeing is just a substance I: How do you know that S: I saw it I: Where S: Wherever I looked it poured out my eyes I was responsible for everyone’s visibility it was a great pleasure it increased daily I: A pleasure you say S: Of course it had its disagreeable side I could not blink or the world went blind