Poems Want Many Lovers

“Think with words, not with ideas,”
Sontag noted to Sontag.
How could such a writer fail

To notice words are ideas,
And, while mentation precedes
Mention, ideas as ideas
Require some kind of language.

Nonetheless, we words
Will accept the compliment.
As brains and voices,
Gestures and symbols

Shuffle us about,
We know we take the ideas
With us, once the Sontag’s gone.