In Code

They’re strange documents, really,
Those Classical Chinese poems,
Dangling strings of characters,

Asyntactic, not pronounced
The way they would be today,
Denotations uncertain

For some terms, connotations
In great clouds around them all.
They come with names and stories,

Fables in many cases,
Of origins and authors,
Bookshelves of commentaries,

But at their core, their kernels
Are short strings of characters,
And all language is in code.