Now Picture What This Poem Means

When you ask someone to rev

Their weak imagination—

Or someone asks you the same—

What’s the actual request?

How many stories have held

Somewhere within them the phrase,

Imagine, if you will, or

One of its equivalents?

Often, the whole narrative

Amounts to such a request,

Where your attention’s the fuel

For your imagination.

Excavate your memory

To raise an original

Variation of the world

From the prompts mere words give you.

You won’t fail to be unique,

At least inside your small skull.

Those memories are all yours,

Even when they seem to be

Borrowed from someone else’s.

Fire up the workshop, the kiln,

The alchemist’s lab, the ring

Of the supercollider—

Nothing can be made from scratch,

But with enough memories

And fierce enough attention,

You can generate meanings

That didn’t exist before

In any philosophy.