The ink we use to write seeps in through our fingers.

What we call reason is the way the parasite

Learns to live in the saint’s intestinal tract.

Even the finest reason still contains the darkness

From feathers packed together; General Patton

Was a salmon who grew large in the Etruscan pool.

Poetry, being language, is woven from animal hair.

The badgers and the thrushes soak up the stain of separation,

Just as lanolin makes the shearer’s hands soft.

The old thinkers of quiddity remind us

Of the fear the hogs feel hanging by their hind legs;

For we know our throats are open to the unfaithful.

Iseult said, “I was climbing on the sounds of my lover’s

Name toward God! Then a badger ran past.

When I said, ‘Oh badger,’ I fell to earth.”

Perhaps if we used no words at all in poems

We could continue to climb, but things seep in.

We are porous to the piled leaves on the ground.