By Richard Mather
ebrah k’dabri - “I will create as I speak”
I am kneading this substance into shape, and with a name I firm it up.
What’s the matter? Matter is pliable.
Inform the material with a word, affirm its special mode of being.
A spoon, a plate. Lamp, desk or jar. Whatever I like.
Call it thingification. These days everything is a thing.
From the primary comes the secondary. From the continuous,
the discontinuous. The words I use limit the unlimited.
Repeat the word: the shape thickens. And again: the clay lets go my fingers.
Every thing is a body and an idea of the body. And the word is the idea.
It holds the thing together.
A nameless substance is between two states, amorphous and sticky,
neither something or nothing.
Named things serve a purpose. But when they don’t, or are hidden,
or unready-to-hand, they quiver into slime, become a slimy mess of stuff.
This poem is a thing: a tangible mass with a certain weight and heft.
But left in a drawer out of sight for too long a time, it loses shape.
Meters unwind, stanzas liquidate. A sorry slop.
The world is also a thing, an object. But who is there to maintain it,
To repeat the name that firms it up? It must be God.
He keeps it in mind. The word ‘world’ is on his tongue.
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