A Barren Cow

One word can mean too many things.
The things a word may mean are words.
Numbers, however abstracted,
Are only more words, words, words, words,

Obsession with counting caught up
Into arithmomania,
The conviction that some names name
Meanings beyond any naming,

The reason why mathematics
And philosophy rub shoulders
More often with divinity
Than with their cousin, poetry.

Words dance a quadrille, complaining
That they are only words, no things.
They dance tarantellas housing
Automata that ignore them.

Pause. The word stark, in English, means
Or has meant, the same thing, complete,
Severe, rigid, a barren cow.
Words can come to terms with monsters.

We give our monsters up to words.
We give up ourselves, the patterns
Of interference shaking out
Between monstrous, monsters, and us.