The Words for Wood and God

You wrote them with reeds in the clay,
Not to read them out loud, to know
That the next signs were of those kinds.

This chair sign means a chair of wood,
And not a sound that sounds like chair.
This god sign means a god’s name’s next.

Like that. The first ghosts, you might guess.
Words in clay no one meant to say.
Ghosts were born, not slain first. They weren’t

Quite things you could say lived—and so
That is why they could not, quite, die.
Wood. God. They’re out there. Not in air.