Papa Did Nothing but Work at His Desk

I know it’s lurking, the one poem that speaks
A person, a people, and a planet,

All at the same time, in exquisite lines,
Sensual, vivid, and wholly righteous,

And, sure, I’m keeping an eye out for it,
Just in case it comes around. But I’m not

So fine a poet, nor nobly human.
I’m obsessed with what the words are up to,

Or would be up to if they really spoke
Not for me or you or anyone but

Themselves, the syntax of Leviathan
Snaking through Humbaba’s garden of verse.

You know how poems make clowns of words, chimp acts,
Or flutes of them, through which apes trill like birds.

What if even first-person were speaking
Not for any person, but for itself?

All day. All night. Sometimes when I’m dreaming,
I hear the whispering, what words would say.