Elves Exactly

Walls hold the keys to lower
Entropy. Life has lower
Entropy. All cells have walls.

Boundaries are important,
If you want any meaning
To hold on to any sense.

You can’t transgress your way free,
Without losing sense, without
More entropy, the cell’s death.

But entropy-barriers
Must be very special kinds
Of walls. In fact, entropy

Must be lowest in the wall,
Because it’s through the wall’s gates
That elaborations dance

As each orderly entrance
And exit, all together
Maintaining the division

Of low-entropy inner
Games from the high-entropy
Outer world. Walls orchestrate

The creation of new worlds
By separating inside
From outside, small world from large,

Living from non-living, and
Meaning from meaninglessness,
Which raises a hard question.

Whatever began raising
All these highly functional,
Low-entropy walls, unwalled?

How does a wall touch the world
Without dissolving its own
Orderly complexity?

Something protects what protects
The engineering inside
Of life and games and meaning,

But trying to study walls
Only proliferates walls
Built by walled students of walls.