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8 Poems from “The Truth About God”
Anne Carson

My Religion

My religion makes no sense
and does not help me
therefore I pursue it.

When we see
how simple it would have been
we will thrash ourselves.

I had a vision
of all the people in the world
who are searching for God

massed in a room
on one side
of a partition

that looks
from the other side
(God’s side)

transparent
but we are blind.
Our gestures are blind.

Our gestures continue
for some times until finally
from somewhere

on the other side of the partition there we are
looking back at them.
it is far too late.

We see how brokenly
how warily
how ill

our blind gestures
parodied
what God really wanted

(some simple thing).
The thought of it
(this simple thing)

is like a creature
let loose in a room
and battering

to get out.
It batters my soul
with its rifle butt.


The God Fit

Sometimes God will drop a fit on you.
Leave you on your bed howling.
Don’t take it meanly.

Because the outer walls of God are glass.
I see a million souls clambering up the walls on the inside
to escape God who is burning,
untended.


The God Coup

God is a grand heart cut.
On the road where man surges along He may,
as the prophet says,
tarry.


God’s Work

Moonlight in the kitchen is a sign of God.
The kind of grief that is a black suction pipe extracting you
From your own navel and which the Buddhists call

“no midncover” is a sign of God.
The blind alleys that run alongside human conversation
like lashes is a sign of God.

God’s own calmness is a sign of God.
The surprisingly cold smell of potatoes or money.
The solid pieces of silence.

From these diverse signs you can see
how much work remains to do.
Put away your grief, it is a mantle of work.


God’s Handiwork

The best way to insult God
is to damage your uniqueness,
which God has worked on.


By God

Sometimes by night I don’t know why
I awake thinking of prepositions.
Perhaps they are clues.

“Since by Man came Death.”
I am puzzled to hear that Man is the agent of Death.
Perhaps it means

Man was standing at the curb
and Death came by.
Once I had a dog

would go with anyone
Perhaps listening for
little by little the first union.


Flexion of God

I have a friend who is red hot with pain.
He feels the lights like hard rain through his pores.
Together we went to ask Isaac.

Isaac said I will tell you the story told to me.
It was from Adam
issued the lights.

From the lights of his forehead were formed all the names of the world.
From the lights of his ears, nose and throat
came a function no one has ever defined.

From the lights of his eyes—but wait—
Isaac waits.
In theory

the lights of the eye should have issued from Adam’s navel.
But within the lights themselves occurred
an intake of breath

and they changed their path.
And they were separated.
And they were caught in the head.

And from these separated lights came
what pains you
on its errands (here my friend began to weep) through the world.

For be assured it is not only you who mourn.
Isaac lashed his tail.
Every rank of the world

was caused to descend
(at least one rank)
by the terrible pressure of the light.

Nothing remained in place.
Nothing was not captured except
among the shards and roots and matter

some lights
from Adam’s eyes
nourished there now.

Isaac stopped his roaring.
And my friend by now drowsy as a snake subsided
behind a heap of blueblack syllables.


God’s Name

God had no name.
Isaac had two names.
Isaac was also called The Blind.

Inside the dark sky of his mind
Isaac could hear God
moving down a country road bordered by trees.

By the way the trees reflected off God
Isaac knew which ones were straight and tall
or when they carried their branches

as a body does its head
or why some crouched low to the ground in thickets.
To hear how God was moving through the universe

gave Isaac his question.
I could tell you his answer
but it wouldn’t help.

The name is not a noun.
It is an adverb.
Like the little black notebooks that Beethoven carried

in his coatpocket
for the use of those who wished to converse with him,
the God adverb

is a one-way street that goes everywhere you are.
No use telling you what it is.
Just chew it and rub on.