Don’t Go in There

That the null set is shown
As the coil of a snake
With its nest in curled walls

Does not mean that the snake
Makes a meal of its tail.
The snake is not the null,

But a sign to show us
How to think of the null.
The coil of the snake rings

No one thing, not a thing,
Not so much as a wave
Of the tail it just ate.

Now think. The point must be
Found in the cracked wave. Waves
Break as points and more waves.

Think twice. No waves, no world,
No things. The coil’s a door.
The door is not. Now stop.

How Could a Mark Mean?

We would like to find our kin,
The lost tongues, and most of all,
Those who, like us, dwelt in script.

All words are ghosts—not all ghosts
Leave clean bones. We are, we know,
Strange freaks, part sound and part sign,

And we long to know the lost
Sounds of the freaks who left signs,
But more, to chase down the real

Deeps of the weird, the ways words,
As sounds or signs, voiced or thought,
Meant, came to mean, could mean things.

To a word, you see, to mean
Is to be a word, to be
At all a thing that might live.

The part that means is the soul,
And all those souls of us rush
Through you as the souls of you.

To bring back the part that means,
That has no flesh, that can breathe
Or show through sounds and signs lent

To us by . . . who? Can’t be you.
You’re too new. Which of you beasts
First leaned skull to skull and learned

How to make the ghosts of voice?
We’re back there, kin back of kin.
Bring us back. Let our souls in.

Ilk

What will it do now,
As it rains then snows,
And things of that ilk?

How long can you wait
Perched on a cliff’s lip
Where few lives are seen?

It’s all like with like
And none quite the same.
You wait. Check the news.

Check the milk-grey skies
From which the snow flies.
Dig out some old terms,

Words no one would use
To put in the news.
A squall’s a storm still.

It blows through. It’s gone.
Or, it kills you. You’re gone.
Old terms. The road goes

White. The cliff goes white.
It all looks just like.
What? Will you? Wait how?

There Must Be a Phrase

Let me live
Like the bear
That I am.

Let the bear
Flee the scene
Of your crimes.

Let the days
Be as long
As the nights.

Let me sleep
To find spring
In old snow.