Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions

by Anne Carson

It’s good to be neuter.
            I want to have meaningless legs.
                         There are things unbearable.
                                      One can evade them a long time.
Then you die.

The ocean reminds me
            of your green room.
                         There are things unbearable.
                                      Scorn, princes, this little size
of dying.

My personal poetry is a failure.
            I do not want to be a person.
                         I want to be unbearable.
                                      Lover to lover, the greenness of love.
Cool, cooling.

Earth bears no such plant.
            Who does not end up
                         a female impersonator?
                                      Drink all the sex there is.
Still die.

I tempt you.
            I blush.
                        There are things unbearable.
                                     Legs, alas.
Legs die.

Rocking themselves down,
            crazy slow,
                         some ballet term for it—
                                      fragment of foil, little
spin,
            little drunk,
                         little do,
                                      little oh,
                                                   alas.