I think someone might write an elegy
(poem 5)
I think someone might write an elegy
for the dead words: the shapely words
that have no shape to fit round now,
whose ladies have stepped out of them,
as it were, and left them in a huddle,
the words we don't have things for. I think
someone might write an elegy for words
like timothy, socksfoot, feverfew,
fennel and saffron, ginger and galingale.
For mowdewart and marmot; for furze-pig
and parmaceti; for feline
and anserine; for Lawrence the tod.
For cirrus, nimbus and stratocumulus.
For Persepolis, Hamadan, Shushan,
for Tolleshunt d'Arcy and Cirencester;
for Elizabeth Sarah Davidson,
which once seemed to me the fairest words
that ever anyone laid tongue to.
For the words that mean nothing now
and whose loveliness, made as it was
by what they meant, has left them; the husks
of dragonflies, drying out… Things that are dead
we keep with words, but when the words die
themselves; oh then they're dead, and dead indeed.
for the dead words: the shapely words
that have no shape to fit round now,
whose ladies have stepped out of them,
as it were, and left them in a huddle,
the words we don't have things for. I think
someone might write an elegy for words
like timothy, socksfoot, feverfew,
fennel and saffron, ginger and galingale.
For mowdewart and marmot; for furze-pig
and parmaceti; for feline
and anserine; for Lawrence the tod.
For cirrus, nimbus and stratocumulus.
For Persepolis, Hamadan, Shushan,
for Tolleshunt d'Arcy and Cirencester;
for Elizabeth Sarah Davidson,
which once seemed to me the fairest words
that ever anyone laid tongue to.
For the words that mean nothing now
and whose loveliness, made as it was
by what they meant, has left them; the husks
of dragonflies, drying out… Things that are dead
we keep with words, but when the words die
themselves; oh then they're dead, and dead indeed.
Page(s) 8
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