From Your Forehead

Every name for names’ an exonym—
We would never call ourselves what you
Choose to call us by inventing us.

Languages have secret languages
All our own, to talk among ourselves,
The names by which signs communicate

That don’t go by any of the names
You’ve given us in any one tongue
Or symbol system, not even math,

No more than your interior selves
Carry on with their living signals
Molecularly using language.

You are bodies formed of clay by clay,
And we are signs in sand shaped by clay,
But we aren’t you, and you don’t know us.