Eve

A dark green gate, locked
With a chain, the Earth,
Or was it the woods,

Looked like it could wait
To the end of days,
Its way in kept closed.

You lived at the place
Where the dark gate faced
The depth of the nights.

The shades long or short,
Too scared to break in,
You turned to look out.

You had a dream once
You lived in the woods,
But you’ve lost it, now.

Signs Fixed in the Limit

Sumerian doesn’t distinguish
Grammatically between genders
But between humans and deities

(The animate case) and animals,
Plants, and bricks (the inanimate case).
We’re reminded of those religions

That divide all ensouled from unsouled.
Languages have to fix things somehow.
A sign is a quantum, however

Greater spacetime may remain a curve.
For a sign, you’ve got to scorch the earth
Around it, burn each name’s boundaries—

The existence of meaning may be
Puzzling, but it is definitely
Discrete. How discretion collapses,

How large a hegemony can get
Before it’s revealed as another
Wave in an endless ocean of waves,

Never wholly distinct from neighbors,
That’s another problem no one’s solved
Yet. In the meantime, approximate.

Hunger

One author tried to sum

Life in two words: life moves.

A poet tried for three:

It. Goes. On. A playful,

Cornered scientist tried

Four: the play of water.

You could keep adding words.

We’re known for piling high.

Sum up life in no words,

Zero numbers, no signs.

Then you might impress gut

Lusts that got it in one.

The Play of Water

Everything reducible gains
Beauty by enhanced measurement.
Yes, the beauty changes. Mist

On the cliffs is mysterious
In a way that crystalline
Sunshine on snow will never be.

But measurement didn’t invent
Change, and mystery can’t prevent
The endless changing of beauties.

Let the measurers measure, then.
You can want to not know without
Condemning lust for knowing. Points

That dance on the waves are not those
Descriptions that calculate them,
But description’s not subtraction.

It’s addition. It’s possible
There’s nothing but waves in the end.
So? Let the measures swim in them.