Thesaurus

Thesaurus


It could be the name
of a prehistoric beast
that roamed the Paleozoic earth,
rising up on its hind legs to show off
its large vocabulary,
or some lover in a myth
who is metamorphosed into a book.

It means treasury,
but it is just a place
where words congregate
with their relatives,
a big park where hundreds
of family reunions
are always being held,
house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings,
and digs, all sharing the same picnic basket
and thermos;
hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy,
and shaggy
all running a sack race
or throwing horseshoes,
inert, static, motionless,
fixed and immobile
standing and kneeling in rows
for a group photograph.

Here father is next to sire
and brother close to sibling,
separated only by fine shades of meaning.
And every group has its odd cousin,
the one who traveled the farthest
to be here: astereognosis, polydipsia,
or some eleven syllable, unpronounceable
substitute for the word tool.
Even their own relatives have to squint
at their name tags.

I can see my own copy up on a high shelf.
I rarely open it, because
I know there is no such thing
as a synonym and because I get nervous
around people who always assemble with
their own kind, forming clubs and nailing
signs to closed front doors
while others huddle alone
in the dark streets.

I would rather see words
out on their own,
away from their families
and the warehouse of Roget,
wandering the world where
they sometimes fall in love
with a completely different word.
Surely, you have seen pairs of them
standing forever
next to each other on the same line
inside a poem,
a small chapel where weddings
like these,
between perfect strangers,
can take place.

Billy Collins

Posted over on Poemhunter