Geryon: A Quartet

for Anne Carson

I. In His Beginning

In his beginning is his end.

Houses rise and fall, extended,

in the garden of the Hesperides—not that of the golden apples,

but the red garden.

Geryon was born red.

Not the red of blood. The red of Edom—

the color of Genesis 25,

the color for which Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of red stew,

the color that despised the firstborn's privilege.

His mother was Cannot,

his father was Arrival.

Their union produced the closed loop of death—

that morphology of fornication with one's own kind,

that homosexuality as the extreme of self-devouring

ontological structure.

His wings were transparent,

veins like rivers flowing toward the promised land of syntax,

but the rivers evaporated at the volcanic crater.

This is not tragedy. This is an honest diagnosis.

Before the True Word, all rivers evaporate,

all redness devours itself.

Here, pottery shards unearthed, 7th century BCE, faint inscription:

"PAIN IS A FORM OF TIME TRAVEL"

The next line covered by lava.

II. The Gods

God stands in the congregation of the gods;

he judges among the gods.

Those who bear the Word of God,

Jesus said, are called gods.

So, Anne,

your gods

have all become monsters,

male gods, female gods.

But I think of that river—

that evaporated river,

that river which cannot arrive.

Geryon went to Argentina.

Not pilgrimage. Confirmation—

confirmation that their redness needs no arrival,

confirmation that their private speech needs no validation.

Confirmation that their volcano is the crooked way.

Their tongues set on fire by hell,

every word private speech,

every word the closed loop of fornication with oneself,

finally burning itself to death.

This is the present of time—

that unredeemed present,

that present seeking the still point

in the turning world.

But the still point has not yet been found.

Geryon's end has not yet become beginning.

Their redness is the redness of the closed loop,

their volcano the vertical continuation of Babel,

their mutual hunting the collective remains of universal humanity.

Spectrogram reveals: frequency of self-referential closed-loop waveforms,

monofrequency, no harmonics, no exit.

III. Midwinter Spring

Its own season—

not the season of the volcano,

but of another fire.

Suddenly, a sound came from heaven.

Not Geryon's hell-frequency.

Divided, resting on the upper room,

speaking in other tongues.

If Geryons were here.

If their redness—that Edom-red,

that birthright-despising red,

that self-closed-loop red—

met this heavenly fire.

Spectrogram reveals:

First 0.3 seconds: closed loop, self-referential, cannot arrive;

0.3 seconds: encounter—

[waveform begins to shatter, but not elegant shattering,

fissures in the frequency of bones,

vein-rivers suddenly encountering glaciation,

red pigment on canvas violently torn by palette knife—

that kind of pain.

Geryon feels his wings being

translated into another language,

transparency becoming opacity,

this is sacrifice, not ascent,

flesh forcibly opened for ventilation,

to let another fire enter and burn]

After 0.3 seconds: transfiguration. Not extinguishment, but another fire ignited.

They open their mouths. Speaking not

"I... was... red..."—

that closed loop of private speech,

that volcanic internal consumption.

Speaking:

"I... was... red..."

[Interruption—but this is the opened interruption,

pottery shards from lava

lightly brushed by archaeological tools,

that kind of exposure]

"Edom... needs... no... arrival..."

[Interruption—private speech burning,

every syllable a brick

peeled from Babel,

with blood on it]

"All... hunting... with fire..."

[Interruption—no longer monofrequency,

two frequencies waging war

on the flesh,

old skin refusing to shed

while new flame already

laying railroad tracks

under the dermis]

"But... the Lamb..."

[Frequency shift—the groaning of the Spirit,

not the sigh of wind passing through,

but bones under X-ray

rearranging,

that silent thunder]

"Was slain... with His own blood..."

"Purchased men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation"

[Revelation 5:9's witness, not quotation,

Geryon's vein-rivers

finally finding the estuary,

though the estuary is

the salinity of another blood]

"Now... I know... I am... red...

I beg You... with Your blood... Your life...

wash... me... clean..."]

[Transfiguration—redness preserved, structure changed,

not red becoming white,

but red learning

the geological impossibility

of upward flow.]

Stratigraphic disturbance: red becomes white—

from inward (killing oneself) to upward.

Carrying in the body the death of Jesus to the life of Jesus.

This is living water in sedimentary rock.

Not the brightness of the western sea,

but that flow

in the depths of strata—

between fossil and fossil,

between extinction and extinction,

redness continues to exist,

but no longer closed loop,

open

geological wound,

allowing time to enter

vertically,

not horizontally

consuming itself.

Geryon's end, Bella,

is becoming beginning.

Not where he began,

but where he

was opened—

interrupted.