Theseus: Stop. Give me your hand. I am your friend. Herakles: I fear to stain your clothes with blood. Theseus: Stain them, I don't care. - Anne Carson

fr. 2
All We as Leaves
He (following Homer) compares man's life with the leaves.
All we as leaves in the shock of it:
spring-
one dull gold bounce and you're there.
You see the sun? - I built that.
As a lad. The Fates lashing their tails in a corner.
But (let me think) wasn't it a hotel in Chicago where I had the first of those - my body walking out of the room
bent on some deadly errand
and me up on the ceiling just sort of fading out-
brainsex paintings I used to call them?
In the days when I (so to speak) painted.
Remember
that oddly wonderful chocolate we got in East
(as it was then) Berlin?

how is a Greek chorus like a lawyer
they’re both in the business of searching for a precedent
finding an analogy
locating a prior example
so as to be able to say
this terrible thing we’re witnessing now is
not unique you know it happened before
or something much like it
we’re not at a loss how to think about this
we’re not without guidance
there is a pattern
we can find an historically parallel case
and file it away under
ANTIGONE BURIED ALIVE FRIDAY AFTERNOON
COMPARE CASE HISTORIES 7, 17 AND 49
now I could dig up those case histories
tell you about Danaos and Lykourgos and the sons of Phineus
people locked up in a room or a cave or their own dark mind
it wouldn’t help you
it doesn’t help me
it’s Friday afternoon
there goes Antigone to be buried alive

A wound gives off its own light
surgeons say.
If all the lamps in the house were turned out
you could dress this wound
by what shines from it.