It is hard to look at things,
harder to say what you see.
Rattle each grain of sand
in its grave of desert?
Why begin unless you intend
to see things to the end?
And do not rely on the words
you overheard in a dream,
not knowing what they mean,
how they sound, those half-shadowed
chess pieces maneuvering
in and out of thought, unthought.
Language goes hard as time
at the first understanding.
Everything goes inside it,
which is an unopened box . . .
vague outline of a blue box
against a black background.
Then your voice’s children
as they escape to the street,
as they wade into the crowd . . .
the wind sucks them through a bone.
A plume of exhalation
withers on the zero air.
We know only one thing,
as a novel knows one story,
like a closed book reading
its own discrete emotions
pressed to paper word by
word, comma by comma.
It is not only duration
allows our mouths approaching
by halves to sometimes kiss.
A word is startled by the eye,
and something is discrete,
if still unknown, no longer.
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