Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Residual Capacity

The two sentences, back to back,
Paper something living over.
A complicated insect squirms
Under the floral wallpaper—

Words will never do us justice.
But we have to try anyway.
Can you feel that little struggle,
The way the words turn on themselves?

A sort of lexicographer,
Collector of obscure words, wrote
Those two sentences, lost in prose,
Sealed them up in glue, in amber.

Who has to try in that sentence?
Who is deserving of justice
In the first? Who is there, if not
The words speaking ill of themselves?

Author, you’ll never do justice
To those words that will live for you
Long after you have lost your pulse,
Long after your lungs lose their breath.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.