And This, This Is Life!

It was a strange business. While doing
Nothing he worked, and while he worked
He did nothing. The sun outside

The convalescent window lit
Reams of previous centuries'
Observances of the going

By the gone. Solitude humming
With golden dust-mote ghosts, symbols
Glowing or absorbing the light,

Little thickets of cracked black sticks
That he knew were not alive, or
Were they, being transformable

By falling light and living brain?
Are the ghosts, like the genes, machines
Or in the machine, or living

Waves of converse conversations
Creating the machinery?
He wished he could consult them all.