We would like to believe that, like the lovers
in Donne, we rule a kingdom of two
in our panic room. That as the body recovers
after love the sun which burns through
our blissed-out eyelids cannot dent us.
But the script intrudes and domination enters;
your phone is flashing with a work email;
our jobs aren’t safe and we still rent. The struggle
is to house-share with Leviathan—while
amending the lines we’re given and that do arouse,
that we’ve been sold and we’re sold on,
with moments wholly ours to improvise…
Hobbes, on anxiety: a perpetual solicitude
of the time to come. The happiest moment must erode.
Leviathan
Vidyan Ravinthiran
Vidyan Ravinthiran is the author of Grun-tu-molani and The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here, as well as a prize-winning study of Elizabeth Bishop.
Featured
10 Ways Ms., Sassy, and Jezebel Changed Your Life!
How contradiction drove fifty years of feminist media
Maggie Doherty
How Emily Wilson Reimagined Homer
Her boldly innovative translation of the Iliad is an epic for our time
Emily Greenwood
You Might Also Like
Worry
Vidyan Ravinthiran
Books
Speech Acts
Eunice de Souza, a post-Independence Indian poet, explores the glitches in poetic voicing
Vidyan Ravinthiran
Subscribe
New perspectives, enduring writing. Join a conversation 200 years in the making. Subscribe to our print journal and receive four beautiful issues per year.
Subscribe