changeable words / changeable worlds
“This autumn we celebrate the power of words to change the world for
the better.” (London Literature Festival, 2014)
what can poets do
whose means are words
but whose scenes of words
are not
the assemblies of the polis
should we (and who are we)
treat the words as
strictly of the household
of the privacy or even privation
of intimacy?
the scenes of the poem are more than
the poem
the poem has responded to its imagined
scenes
the poet may not
be altogether helpless in this
a political solution
that words might undo
what other words
are doing
no boots on the ground solution
the abstraction
of military violence
to a great height
or distance
much like
words
tasks for poets in times of war
silence
incitement
exhortation
abomination
appeasement
reportage
lying
membership
justification
calls on the divine
on the power of the names
of secured values
attending keenly to what it is
that words can do
to the words that can do
behaving as though
there is no war
lazy words
words is a lazy term
for what happens
when people speak and hear each other
or write and read each other
or sing to or with each other
poems are more than words
a poem cannot on its own
a poem
cannot on its own
undo history
(what might poem
be a lazy term for?)
where history
is the past
still told and lived
a scene
supposedly
telling itself
a poem may attempt
to declare its own scene
in a sleight-of-text
meant to deceive itself
a poet can hear this happen
perhaps helplessly
but how does a poem
undo its own betrayals?
between us
and who is us anyway
the sharing and divisions
of vocabulary and rhythm
are facts of politics
of the ‘world’
counter-moves by poets
can distance
the very those
they are intended to help
politics must assume
the ever-potentiality
of a ‘we’
but usually instead
asserts a singular plural of
we is who you say I is
this may be the space
of the poem.
coda
a single syllable
in a lyric poem
“This autumn we celebrate the power of words to change the world for
the better.” (London Literature Festival, 2014)
what can poets do
whose means are words
but whose scenes of words
are not
the assemblies of the polis
should we (and who are we)
treat the words as
strictly of the household
of the privacy or even privation
of intimacy?
the scenes of the poem are more than
the poem
the poem has responded to its imagined
scenes
the poet may not
be altogether helpless in this
a political solution
that words might undo
what other words
are doing
no boots on the ground solution
the abstraction
of military violence
to a great height
or distance
much like
words
tasks for poets in times of war
silence
incitement
exhortation
abomination
appeasement
reportage
lying
membership
justification
calls on the divine
on the power of the names
of secured values
attending keenly to what it is
that words can do
to the words that can do
behaving as though
there is no war
lazy words
words is a lazy term
for what happens
when people speak and hear each other
or write and read each other
or sing to or with each other
poems are more than words
a poem cannot on its own
a poem
cannot on its own
undo history
(what might poem
be a lazy term for?)
where history
is the past
still told and lived
a scene
supposedly
telling itself
a poem may attempt
to declare its own scene
in a sleight-of-text
meant to deceive itself
a poet can hear this happen
perhaps helplessly
but how does a poem
undo its own betrayals?
between us
and who is us anyway
the sharing and divisions
of vocabulary and rhythm
are facts of politics
of the ‘world’
counter-moves by poets
can distance
the very those
they are intended to help
politics must assume
the ever-potentiality
of a ‘we’
but usually instead
asserts a singular plural of
we is who you say I is
this may be the space
of the poem.
coda
a single syllable
in a lyric poem