Gold and Cardboard

1. My son said Daddy are there words for everything? I said You mean the space between The clouds? “Yes!” “No!” Like those who love to think one word will take care of Maupassant’s tree and his landlady. But it turns out you will get no further than the words that reach and do not touch. X uses a hard word one per poem like throwing a true diamond sale or throwing a Ruby on a Corten steel table, a little gold in cardboard. There is a country where They make their own cardboard. General words the French love, a thousand eyes but only one Kaleidoscope. Even Merleau-Ponty not specific enough (said Meyer) like very pretty exit signs Without numbers. Paul Valéry said the world was made out of nothing and sometimes a bit of that Nothing shines through. No grin, no cat. But I think: The world was made of gold, and every once in a while Some of that gold shines through. You. They say it doesn’t matter that you can’t read the Book of Splendor in Aramaic. “Just leave it in your house.” Amazing debilitating magic at the door! If there were the right word for everything, each young philosopher Could dream without sleeping. Using the same ruler and we’d all Have the same measures and ladders without rungs, with regular risers. Music without words: it does a good job of caring about you, X-ray of thought the architect wanted. X-ray for the lovers— I always loved to climb that ladder without rungs, I collect them. I fight over them, I forgive My antagonist. Even the wild ladder without tongues. Even the literal is a metaphor. This is not nothing says the boy to the teacher who could care less. Multeity. And if I made up a word Would it survive like a quark of strangeness? Depends on which dictionary you’re using, I told The president of that company. And if you made it up, like a rare country? I loved you in the near distance like a word and rare cool blood. What was I thinking? “You actually think?” 2. family ways My old dead father put it to me Women of an “intimate” age Reconciled all separation He sung it out Oh family ways, ah family ways The song contained a pregnant pause pun praise Patiently he observed, as the rat jumped out Patient in music, patient in clay Patient in love and in death, a satisfied ghost