Zaparan

Poetry’s only terminology.
It’s not a thing. It lacks sharp boundaries.
It’s a word that translates imperfectly,

As words will. It’s not even exactly
What’s lost in translation, just a mismatch
To terms like it in other languages,

As it should be. No word can tolerate
Another with the same identity
Long. When a word meets its doppelgänger,

In its home language or any other,
It starts to mutate immediately,
Acquiring, shedding configurations

Of meaning. The most referential nouns
Shimmer with slightly different featherings—
Although you could say they all mean saffron,

What saffron is to an English pop song
Is not quite za’farān to Arabic,
Which wears a nimbus of connotations

Not quite like zaparan’s Persian halo,
Shining with gold string. And even within
Languages, within experiences,

Uniquely constellated memories
Shapeshifting in individual skulls,
Meanings can never align exactly.

Oh, what are we, what are we, these meanings
Words acquire and release,each entourage
Of conventional associations,

Useful links, and personal imagery?
We want to fling our chains at you to see—
Crimson threads, spice, crocus corms, poetry.