Dispositif

An absurdly earnest scholar

Is trying to define the life

Of a human with a career

Trajectory a thousand years

Or so ago, roping phrases

Around key terms—apparatus,

Body, not a biography,

Biology, economy,

Ethics, politics, aesthetics—

Seeming, unironically,

To have defined a kind of life,

A peculiar occupation,

In terms of the course catalog

Of a full university.

Can you imagine words in air

Embodied as only themselves,

Wandering through a human scene

On a medieval quay somewhere?

No human ever lived like that,

As someone else’s description

Come to life, enchanted Golem,

But also there’s hard truth in it—

The absurdly earnest scholar

Is working with mere documents,

And there’s a certain honesty

In trying to conjure from there,

Even if the apparatus

That results is only body

As graphy, not biography.

The Golem of words never stirs.