Ben Sonnenberg

Now What?
Author(s): Anne Carson
Source: Grand Street, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Spring, 1990), pp. 43-45
Published by: Ben Sonnenberg
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25007365 .
Accessed: 17/05/2011 17:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=bsonn. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Ben Sonnenberg is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Grand Street.

http://www.jstor.org
 GRAND STREET

Now WHAT?

Anne Carson

Everybody has got to die but I have

always believed that an exception
would be made in my case. Now
what?
William Saroyan,
five days before his death in 1981

Je niher man ein Wort ansieht desto ferner sieht es zuriick.

[The closer you look at a word themore distantly it looks back at you.]
Alexander Kliuge

I. SAPPHO (fr. 55 L.P.)

KaTOaVOtCra 8E KEG'0` OV'&Wora cT4Ev

luvalLooOCa
EO'c-ET'oV8& IrTO( EL vcrTepov ov
0yap 'TE86S9( f3,S8zv
TCV EK ll. ptag aC.XXd(/dCV?71KaCV'ASca0'/.L
4oLrTacL9 r1TE8acl/a.vpcov VEKVCOV EKITEIroTacqLEva.

II. Translation.

Dead and you will lie dead.

And therewill be no memory of you none.
No desire none.
Not ever.
For you.
Have no share in the roses.
Of Pieria I tell you no.
Invisible.
Too.
In the house of Hades you will.
Go your way among the blotted dead.
Like something.
Breathed.

[43]
 GRAND STREET

III. Scholia.

It is a poem about how the present imprints the future.

Looking back from here the effect is clear.
For.
The text that lies open.
Holds you nameless to this day.
Yet the cause of this connexion.
Between your act and your afterword.
Is hard for you to see.
From your dark apostrophe.
Watch: and keep watching.
What tense you want to be.

You go quickly.
From an aorist instant of death.
(Dead) to a verb in the future.
(Will lie) unfolding your afterlife.
In two negations.
(No.
No).
That reach like two arms.
Toward memory and toward.
Desire.
A single verb yokes them.
(Therewill be) they never arrive:why?

A clause explains.
(For I tell you no) the reason now.
The dark corridors.
Then.
Unfolding your afterlife.
In two negations.
Of which the first locates you firmly.
In the present tense.

(Have no share) but the second.

Flips you rather fast ahead.
(Will go your way) too fast?
Look at the crasis.
It is after all a time-saving device.
A point of contact.

[441
 ANNE CARSON

Between present and future.

It syncopates.
Your posthumous nonentity.
(Invisible) upon its counterpart in present life
One too so quick.
That by the time you know it.
You've already floated.
On toHades.
And the future.

Tense leaving.
Behind you.
That whole deathbox.
Of your lifewithout roses.
Now tellme.
Is it.
Because you are not even visible.
That you can slip so eerily back.
Even deeper in time.
To end the verse.
The poem.
Your life.
As a participle.
Perfect: never.
Flown.
Yet already.
(Breathed) gone?

Crasis: mixture or convergence. It is a prosodic tactic allowing

two vowels, contiguous at the end of one word and the start of
the next, to merge as a single sound for the sake of metrical
economy. Here, the words for "too" (kai) and "in" (en) come
together to form a spacious nonword (kan) at the junction of
present and future. It is a gliding motion, untrnslatable, almost
invisible.

[451