people in exile write so many letters

I had a request for Anne Carson, before I even started the month, but the problem I always have with posting Anne Carson during National Poetry Month is that her stuff is so difficult to excerpt, and I like her long things—Autobiography of Red, the Oresteia translation, the Glass Essay—more than her short things, a lot of the time. I'm also in a weird place with Anne Carson right now because the show we saw last night was...her id on stage? And I love her work, but I'm not sure the stage is the right place for her id. On the other hand, sometimes she does short really well. The line breaks on this poem are pretty arbitrary and (as far as I can tell) somewhat dependent on the printing, but as prose poetry it does work for me, which prose poetry rarely does. Maybe it's the Ovid. 

I see him there on a night like this but cool, the 

moon blowing through black streets. He sups

and walks back to his room. The radio is on the 

floor. Its luminous green dial blares softly. He

sits down at the table; people in exile write so 

many letters. Now Ovid is weeping. Each night

about this time he puts on sadness like a 

garment and goes on writing. In his spare time he 

is teaching himself the local language (Getic) in 

order to compose in it an epic poem no one will 

ever read. 

—Anne Carson, "On Ovid," from Short Talks, 1992.