Words, Too, Are Hosts

The ghosts have their ghosts.
The fact of a word,
A mark or a sign,
Is a husk if none
Knows what it might mean.

From where do the souls
Of signs, what they mean,
Come? Flesh thinks it’s flesh
But can’t think so if
Not for signs with souls.

Words can say it’s us
Who mean, us, not flesh,
But if no flesh knows
What it is we mean,
Then who speaks for us?

You want to know what
Makes up your lost souls,
Gods, ghosts, and so forth?
What it is in words
And flesh both that means—

A wave with no points,
No peaks, no troughs—storm
That needs flesh for fuel,
Words and signs for forms,
But is no thing. Means.