In Defense of Babel
–for Alastair Noble
When the sniper’s eye from paradise
fastened on the tower,
sand exploded and gushed into
a whirlwind of shrieks.
In Babel’s place rose
the libraries, cell by cell,
words stacked like
bees crawling on honeycombs,
where even Edgar Allan Poe
sits down at his heart
and boards up his words.
In a flurry year to year
some little god must crawl,
dismantling installations.
And yet the body makes a language
even of its spasms.
In every climate
words rise to the top of
the coiled stairs in the skull,
paradise’s gate.
Knock there.
Speak and be misunderstood.
— Lee Upton