How each has a form had a form,
Not just tales piled in leaves, in heaps
That mat and rot, and not just songs,
But the sign or the sound one made
So that at least one more would see
The sense of it, some thing in it.
This poem would guess, if you could trace
A word like a rope to its depths,
It would fray and spread out as slime
Or dark smoke sprawled on the sea floor,
As much a wave as a black hole.
All words. Swear words. Sweet words. Nouns. Verbs.
All that have meant the most to you,
Terms learned from soft mouths the hard way.
They, we, all the way back, down, drowned.
We can’t know who was the first one
Of this us. How can you say this?
