Dancing Ghosts

Why does that seem charming?
How whimsical are you?
Or are you just gothic?

All the unreal topics
That real words keep in mind!
Sometimes we’re exhausted

Holding up the crystal
Sphere of the imagined
Nonexistent cosmos,

Including old Atlas
Himself, for you. Words do
Things no other real things

Can do, netting the gone
And hauling up false heaps
Of arrangements structured

In impossible ways,
Moore’s garden and toads both,
Will’s inhabited air,

The whole claptrap of thought
As imagination,
The chimeric wonders

Dragging broken echoes,
Repurposed memories,
For your satisfaction,

For your entertainment—
So much to keep dancing
As your ghosts but stay us.