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poem riddles
Apr. 30th, 2013 01:36 pmA new poem by Anne Carson published by the London Review of Books--she mixed up the lines into a random order in the published version, and I dorkily ran over and reorganized them to find out the secrets/see where she started.
By Chance the Cycladic People
1.0. The Cycladic was a neolithic culture based on emmer wheat, wild barley, sheep, pigs and tuna speared from small boats.
1.1. The boats had up to fifty oars and small attachments at the bow for lamps. Tuna was fished at night.
1.2. The Cycladic was an entirely insomniac culture.
2.0. They wore their faces smooth with trying to sleep, they ground their lips and nipples off in the distress of pillows.
2.1. It was no use. They’d lost the knack. Sleep was a stranger.
2.2. Well, they said, these are the pies we have. It was a proverb.
2.3. This became a Cycladic proverb.
3.0. While staying up at night the Cycladic people invented the frying pan.
3.1. Quite a number of frying pans have been found by archaeologists. The frying pans are small. No one was very hungry at night.
3.2. Or they may have been prestige frying pans.
3.3. A final theory is that you could fill the pan with water and use it as a mirror.
4.0. Mirrors led the Cycladic people to think about the soul and to wish to quiet it.
4.1. To uncontrive.
4.2. My point of view is admittedly faulty. My nose is always breathing. I am worn out with breathing. I suspect you have days when you choose not to breathe at all.
4.3. Is it because you don’t want the impact.
4.4. How you spear it, how you sheer it, how you flense it, how you grind it, how you get it to look so strangely relaxed.
5.0. The Cycladic people were very fond of Proust.
5.1. Possibly because of his blanket refusal to listen to another person’s dreams at the breakfast table, for Proust dismissed this type of recollection as ‘mere anamnesia’.
5.2. Proust liked a good jolt.
5.3. That moment when everyone sees exactly what is on the end of their fork, as William S. Burroughs said of celebrity.
6.0. To the Cycladic people is ascribed the invention of the handbag,
6.1. The handbag, that artefact which freed human beings from having to eat food wherever they found it.
6.2. So began the dinner parties.
6.3. And after dinner, harps.
7.0. To play a stringless harp requires only the thumbs.
7.1. Abstention from grain is helpful.
7.2. Abstention from grain is the same for men and women. You put your lungs in an extraordinary state of clear coolness.
8.0. Not sleeping made the Cycladic people gradually more and more brittle. Their legs broke off.
8.1. They worried about this and kept their arms close to the body, clasping the torso right arm below left, like a cummerbund.
8.2. Left arm below right was considered uncouth.
9.0. When their faces wore smooth they painted them back on with azurite and iron ore.
9.1. Did I mention the marble pillows, I think I did.
9.2. They painted wonderful widow’s peaks on themselves or extra breasts.
9.3. Their eyes fell out.
9.4. They put stones in their eye sockets. Upper-class people put precious stones.
9.5. Perhaps now they were glad after all that they did not sleep.
10.0. Eventually the Cycladic people died out all except one, a ferryboat captain.
10.1. She plied the ferryboat back and forth, island to island, navigating by means of her inner eye.
10.2. Her inner eye grew sharp enough to slaughter goats.
11.0. Three times a day she put the boat on autopilot and went down below to the cool silent pantry.
11.1. The pantry, what a relief after the splash and glare of the helm.
11.2. In the pantry she sat at the counter and ate with her hands.
11.3. The food was tastier that way.
11.4. Left hand on Tuesdays, right hand on Wednesdays.
11.5. This may sound to you like a mere boyish stunt.
11.6. She thought it a good idea to silence mental conversation.
12.0. Clouds every one of them smell different, so do ocean currents. So do rocky reefs.
12.1. All this expertise just disappears when a people die out.
13.0. One night there was a snowfall, solitary, absurd.
14.0. That was the night she looked to her soul.
14.1. There it was plunging up and down in its shallow holes.
15.0. She’d been a pretty good harpist before the die-off.
15.1. See me leaving you better hang your head and cry, she liked songs like that. Honkytonk influence.
16.0. As far as the experience of stirring is concerned, small stillness produces small stirring and great stillness great stirring.
16.1. There it lay, the foredeck in the moonlight, more silver than the sea.
16.2. Prior to the movement and following the movement, stillness.
16.3. All of her leapt before her eyes.
By Chance the Cycladic People
1.0. The Cycladic was a neolithic culture based on emmer wheat, wild barley, sheep, pigs and tuna speared from small boats.
1.1. The boats had up to fifty oars and small attachments at the bow for lamps. Tuna was fished at night.
1.2. The Cycladic was an entirely insomniac culture.
2.0. They wore their faces smooth with trying to sleep, they ground their lips and nipples off in the distress of pillows.
2.1. It was no use. They’d lost the knack. Sleep was a stranger.
2.2. Well, they said, these are the pies we have. It was a proverb.
2.3. This became a Cycladic proverb.
3.0. While staying up at night the Cycladic people invented the frying pan.
3.1. Quite a number of frying pans have been found by archaeologists. The frying pans are small. No one was very hungry at night.
3.2. Or they may have been prestige frying pans.
3.3. A final theory is that you could fill the pan with water and use it as a mirror.
4.0. Mirrors led the Cycladic people to think about the soul and to wish to quiet it.
4.1. To uncontrive.
4.2. My point of view is admittedly faulty. My nose is always breathing. I am worn out with breathing. I suspect you have days when you choose not to breathe at all.
4.3. Is it because you don’t want the impact.
4.4. How you spear it, how you sheer it, how you flense it, how you grind it, how you get it to look so strangely relaxed.
5.0. The Cycladic people were very fond of Proust.
5.1. Possibly because of his blanket refusal to listen to another person’s dreams at the breakfast table, for Proust dismissed this type of recollection as ‘mere anamnesia’.
5.2. Proust liked a good jolt.
5.3. That moment when everyone sees exactly what is on the end of their fork, as William S. Burroughs said of celebrity.
6.0. To the Cycladic people is ascribed the invention of the handbag,
6.1. The handbag, that artefact which freed human beings from having to eat food wherever they found it.
6.2. So began the dinner parties.
6.3. And after dinner, harps.
7.0. To play a stringless harp requires only the thumbs.
7.1. Abstention from grain is helpful.
7.2. Abstention from grain is the same for men and women. You put your lungs in an extraordinary state of clear coolness.
8.0. Not sleeping made the Cycladic people gradually more and more brittle. Their legs broke off.
8.1. They worried about this and kept their arms close to the body, clasping the torso right arm below left, like a cummerbund.
8.2. Left arm below right was considered uncouth.
9.0. When their faces wore smooth they painted them back on with azurite and iron ore.
9.1. Did I mention the marble pillows, I think I did.
9.2. They painted wonderful widow’s peaks on themselves or extra breasts.
9.3. Their eyes fell out.
9.4. They put stones in their eye sockets. Upper-class people put precious stones.
9.5. Perhaps now they were glad after all that they did not sleep.
10.0. Eventually the Cycladic people died out all except one, a ferryboat captain.
10.1. She plied the ferryboat back and forth, island to island, navigating by means of her inner eye.
10.2. Her inner eye grew sharp enough to slaughter goats.
11.0. Three times a day she put the boat on autopilot and went down below to the cool silent pantry.
11.1. The pantry, what a relief after the splash and glare of the helm.
11.2. In the pantry she sat at the counter and ate with her hands.
11.3. The food was tastier that way.
11.4. Left hand on Tuesdays, right hand on Wednesdays.
11.5. This may sound to you like a mere boyish stunt.
11.6. She thought it a good idea to silence mental conversation.
12.0. Clouds every one of them smell different, so do ocean currents. So do rocky reefs.
12.1. All this expertise just disappears when a people die out.
13.0. One night there was a snowfall, solitary, absurd.
14.0. That was the night she looked to her soul.
14.1. There it was plunging up and down in its shallow holes.
15.0. She’d been a pretty good harpist before the die-off.
15.1. See me leaving you better hang your head and cry, she liked songs like that. Honkytonk influence.
16.0. As far as the experience of stirring is concerned, small stillness produces small stirring and great stillness great stirring.
16.1. There it lay, the foredeck in the moonlight, more silver than the sea.
16.2. Prior to the movement and following the movement, stillness.
16.3. All of her leapt before her eyes.
