Tongue Stones in the House of Dust

We’re susceptible to forgetting,
Not our own, but yours. If you forget

What we mean, what we meant once, it’s death
For us, or would be if we’d had lives.

After that you have to work your way—
At least, some of your descendants do—

By means of other notions, still stuck
To tongues of living conversations,

Every meaning a kind of handhold,
Sticky grip on a protruding lip,

Until you can reimagine us
Into the sticks and stones left of us,

And those stones can come to speaking life.
You’ve no idea how many of us

Once swarmed around mysterious scripts
You can’t decipher, can’t reason back

To meaning, scripts faded in desert
Heat and mountain light, dust headed west.