The Smallest Hole in the World

The soul is a paragraph,
A ghostly rhetorical
Device of uncertain heft,

A wraith, if you like, a gap,
A thin line in the margin,
An aid to comprehension

That gradually became
A form of composition,
An argument in itself.

The calcified soul’s a book
Of Victorian grammar
Laws, the unrestricted soul

A splotch of indulgent flaws,
But the first thought of the soul
Shook from fear nothing kept whole.