The Law of Closed Doors

When we walked to the Peabody Hotel,

you said:

The infeasible thought—

horror of the forest in the subtle pages

silent thunder muffled in the foliage

muttering a description

liberated from a fistful of dust.

That volatile dispersion of words

hurt me. It fell like a cast iron web

the rusted and heavy 
filigree of architectures collapsing.

The sound was horrendous

the clangs and the crashes.

I said:

You have no idea what you are saying.

You said:

The pure work of art demands

the death of the poet who must yield

initiative to words

set in motion by the clash 
of their inequalities.

I said:

So our love's a consecrated fiction?

Only desiccated diction?

I said that leaves us no way out

but the way we came in, not the fact 

but the lie of the language that speaks us.

You said:

We are where we do not speak

searching for the name of the missing thing.

I said:

What's the name of the missing thing?

You said:

The unexpected precipitation 
of an unexpected meaning—

twin doors of urinary segregation.

And we walked to the Peabody Hotel

to see the ducks.