Words

"City of Words" by Vito Acconci


Words


Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood,
But noble platitudes: ah, that’s a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that’s genuinely good
From one that’s base but merely has succeeded.


W.H.Auden



* * * *

Envoi


Goodbye, words.
I never liked you,
Liking things and places, and
Liking people best when their mouths are shut.

Go out and lose yourself in a jabbering world,
Be less than nothing, a vacuum
Of which words will beware
Lest by suction, your only assertion,
you pull them in.


For that I like you, words,
Self-destroyed, self-dissolved
You grow true.
To what? You tell me, words.


Run and I’ll follow,
Never to catch you up.
Turn back, and I’ll run.
So goodbye.


Michael Hamburger

* * *

Some words I say come out all wrong
and mean their opposite, or not even that,
some other word northeast of what I say
or cut from different wood. Beech
not birch. All words are wood,
be clear on that, the only lumber
some people get to work with or to burn.
The old printers carved big letters
out of maple to print their headlines with
and we’re no different, wooden language
the louder we speak, oversimplified
philosophy or outright lies to make you
love me, what else does anybody care
about, love love love, Foucault’s asshole
Sartre’s cigarette, the love that carves
or brands the poor runic alphabet
deep into the practice of desire.

Robert Kelly

First two Poems posted over on Friko's Musings , Kelly's prose poem posted on Charlotte Mandel