Searching for things sublime I walked up into the muddy windy big hills
behind the town where trees riot according to their own laws and
one may
observe so many methods of moving green—under, over, around, across,
up the back, higher, fanning, condensing, rifled, flat in the eyes, as if
pacing a
cell, like a litter of grand objects, minutely, absorbed, one leaf at a time,
ocean-furious, nettle-streaked, roping along, unmowed, fresh out of pools,
clear as Babel,
such a tower, scattered through the heart, green in the strong sense, dart-
shook, crownly, carrying the secrets of its own heightening on
up, juster than a shot, gloomier than Milton or even his king of terrors,
idol in its dark parts, as a word coined to mean “storm” (of love) or
“waving lines”
(architectural), scorned, clean, with blazing nostrils, not a servant, not
rapid, rapid.
—Anne Carson
Anne Carson is a poet, essayist, and classicist who teaches at McGill and the University of Michigan; she is also a consulting editor to The Threepenny Review. The author of Autobiography of Red, Eros the Bittersweet, and other books, she is a recent fellow of the MacArthur Foundation.
