Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson

Love does not make me gentle or kind, thought Geryon as he and his mother eyed each other from opposite shores of the light.

Cold night smell coming in the windows. New moon floating white as a rib at the edge of the sky.

Herakles switched on the ignition and they jumped forward onto the back of the night. Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh.

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

So what did he do? He gave out souvenir pumice and showed where the incandescence had brushed him I am a drop of gold he would say I am molten matter returned from the core of earth to tell you interior things— Look! he would prick his thumb and press out ocher-colored drops that sizzled when they hit the plate— Volcano blood!

men had to be taught to hate women

A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.

Under the seams runs the pain.

At what point does one say of a man that he has become unreal?

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.