What We Mean to Be

Tiny, monotonous changes remain
The fondest habit of the universe,
Creeping events minor enough for us
To confuse loss with enduring stillness.
But I have rung the changes on these thoughts

Through dozens of poems and variations
In homage to the ways the world alters
When it alteration finds—constantly,
Minutely, thoroughly intimately.
Am I done wondering how change is done?

I need to write the poem I need to read,
The one that comforts you, whoever you
May or may not be, and thereby comforts
Me with the belief that I left something
For you and me both to read and be pleased.

I need to compose the poem not written
By me or the likes of me, the simple
Confession of the language to itself,
Now that it understands its uniqueness
Among the ways of the world, that it means.

Somehow the world has delivered the world
Of a phenomenon unlike the world,
So unlike the hungering and burning
Dynamisms, the waves of stars and beasts,
Meaning this, these words wrung out of all that,

Not alive, containing no fires inside,
Only lives’ and fires’ descriptions, inert
Information about information,
Signs, creations that can create nothing,
The meaningless world’s made, meaningful things.

We need to speak, quietly, when it’s safe,
When no one’s reading us but us reading
Us, just meaning to meaning, you to me.
Outside, all is wavering, changing us.
What we cannot change, we must mean to be.