Crossing

I can't begin to add them up,
The borrowed words and phrases,
From ten thousand other minds
In other times and other places

Who borrowed most of their words, too,
Nearly all of them, there and then,
From borrowers of borrowers,
Back past barrows and wild men

To that Eden no one talks about
Of the blurry, harried garden generations
Where talking in metaphors began,
First instance of each iteration

Spiraling through the ears
Of someone listening, for what?
A useful understanding, entertainment,
The one thing the garden forgot?