The Golden Coil

The same snake, in some sense, made

Of words, wrote Byatt, in prose,

Of a character meeting

Milton’s prelapsarian

Serpent of blank verse. The same

Snake, in some sense. But what sense?

What sense stays the same in words?

Here are little memories

That bump other memories.

All the memories are yours—

Not Eve’s, Milton’s, or Byatt’s—

But something of the word snake

Is the same. Or similar?

As all streams are similar,

All forests, all skyscrapers?

Or as every mass-produced

Item, rubber ducks to jets,

Is similar—same design

Repeated in fresh matter?

No, the word itself is more

Same, but the memories less.

Do you see the glorious,

Quadrupedal, coiling snake

Of Milton’s, gold, circling spires

Among your thoughts now, floating

Redundant, the phrase Byatt

Took from Milton to pin down

Her tale? What is it you see

In shared same words—redundant,

Floating—no one’s ever seen?

What stays the same in sameness,

In anything, any sense?

Absence. The absence of change,

Or is it incompleteness?

Change and sameness coil as one

In us, a gold snake hisses.