A searching face and question
Unasked dispel the unreal spectre of
Mere assertion; silence calls into
Question the unfounded basis of
Certainty. A word entails the world, the

Acknowledgment of unknowledge,
The compromise of reality, sphere
Entire, sliced and allotted into a gloss
For the perusal of the half-listening.

Life, lived, casts the task of itself into the
Unthought time between death and birth,
Reclining in the infinite space between us,
Disdaining the interminable attempt at
Self-definition. Recollection is a task

For some abstract Spirit, presentless,
Discerning insight’s invisible presence,
Demanding from Memory’s regathered
Message its own imagined history.

Word emerges, unhurried, into the
Space of itself, working at the statue
Of its self-enactment, unhearing in its
Labour the lament of unspoken thought
And word spoken unthinking, in silence.