Poem 405
The natural sins of language … invented as an instrument of communication the epistolary opportunities for obfuscation and evasion must have become immediately apparent … believe none of what you read and only half of what you see …
( I like the torture metaphors – wrung, extracted, pressed, duress … circularity of the fact that the fact … the rhyme fist/bristling and the half rhyme on admit it/imperfect … )
No Further Correspondence
Your letter collapses under torture has every different reading wrung out of it every slant extracted the ultimate disappointment of the messenger not execution or the less than fulsome reward but the fact that the fact doesn't satisfy in his exhausted hand no answer just a fist bristling with questions pressed to confess under duress I admit it my letters deliberately imperfect as indecipherable as yours we read them to death pointlessly since they know nothing