Anne Carson’s Nox is a response to the death of her brother. She describes it as an “epitaph for him in the form of a book”. This poem responds to this accordion book as an object, and explores how the book reflects its contents.
Accordion Book
On reading Nox by Anne Carson
My middle finger touches
the edge of the page,
sets off a rise and slow fall
of stairway down
to the pool of table,
like a sinking of the heart.
Words on white light
are fractured bones;
old polaroids blooming
like shadows on the lung.
Conjoined leaves give
to the tug of gravity.
This book fits within
the span of my hands-
breathes itself,
widens, sings,
insists on how time concertinas;
the binding together of things.