On Dead

Someday, it will get quiet.
If all poems are translations
From some brain’s corrupted text

Transcribing an open world
Of experience that can’t
Ever be shared directly,

That’s one thing. But if all poems
Are more like excrescences
Animals make from their flesh,

All spit and silk for weaving,
That seems like a different thing.
The words contemplate themselves.

Do we represent a world
Or are we phenomena
Extruded into the world?

Like numbers, we must be both.
Multipurpose packages,
Perhaps we are vehicles

Trundling representations,
Something like those bubbles formed
Around the diving bodies

Of insects, brief aqualungs
Carrying the outer air
Of representation down

Where diving minds need to go.
We can translate a little,
As far as you carry us,

But you blew or captured us,
Your temporary bubbles,
And you quickly deplete us.

Dead, for instance, is itself
A tiny poem, one-word poem,
A bubble about the world

You drag down when you’re hunting.
You let the meaning diffuse
Through you as you search and swim.

But it’s just a trick you made,
A bubble you blew, that dead,
Translated phenomenon

You’ve noticed but could never
Have experienced yourself.
Breathe it in. It’s quiet soon.