Boundary Condition

Below even the beggar,

The pauper, the utterly

Destitute and low, Patrick

Joyce itemized the Polish

Peasantry categories.

Between beggar and pauper,

What could have been the difference?

Permission to go begging?

In England, a pauper held

The special legal standing,

The in forma pauperis,

Therefore not charged legal fees,

Pauper’s root, in any case,

Shared with poor, the pre-Latin

*pau-paros, little bringing,

Producing next to nothing.

The body of the pauper

Summing all the pauper’s worth,

Which only goes to show you

What creatures of surpluses

Human beings have become.

Tigers and moths are paupers,

As is the oak in the field,

The lizard in the courtyard.

Maybe ants and honeybees

With their storage colonies

Aren’t paupers, but aren’t they, though?

All the workers in service

All their lives to their systems,

What are they but worn bodies?

The pack rat on its midden

Is no pauper, but offers

No surplus trades to others.

Pauper, very poor person,

Died a pauper, buried in

A pauper’s grave, having lived

Like a pauper, dependent

Entirely on charity,

Not even able to beg.

There’s no dignity to it,

None at all, just misery,

But in the extremity

Of the word itself, pauper,

Dark, gate-keeping quality,

Human being boundary.