On the fourth line of Rae Armantrout’s “Buy In”

Yes, we did
ask to be born.

Not all of us, of course,
only the first few.

They must have bought in
to this round robin
duress:

the gasp,

the gnawing hunger,
then the actual gnawing.

Maybe they did it
the way we’d put on

a corset or toe shoes
one night

and feel fabulous.

To be able to repeat themselves
must have seemed

like such a thrill
at first.

But who were they
if not that trick—

that breathless
pirouette?

*

New York Review of Books

*

Would rather not get stuck in belatedness, but not a line in this would stray should we opt for such a reading. Two of the later questions are (a) did they know what they were getting us into and (b) did they hope we’d somehow make it so they didn’t ruin it for us? Affirmatives would diminish them (shifting the interrogative to the penultimate line). Negatives mean we at least have something they don’t (hope) and so would likewise diminish them though only in the light of us.