Only This and Only This
a sonnet
To understand these words
You must remember
The grammar you disclose.
Take the knife from the kitchenette
And indicate so-and- so.
But what is he pointing to?
And the knife – will dinner be served?
Only this and only this:
You have come
Ever so naturally; across whose legless trails
Cornfields swoon ripe, then gray.
Then, only this: the gestures and not-images…
Queerly enough, primal elements are rediscovered,
I think of these words as instruments.
Analogy to a Former Use
- A Time for Language
What mentation will accompany these expressions
Whose meanings bore us no justification,
And understandings were ghosts
Dying in our springs?
- A Time for Chess
What conveying, from anyone to anyone,
That by exchanges, can leave the bishop unaltered?
A white hat twists on the paper king
Who asks, over and over,
What shall I mean?
III. A Time for Logic
You will cast these meanings – primitive, various –
Over your shoulder into its unsigned calculus…
Intangibility, you see, is sometimes tangible,
He calls it purring, and she calls it growling.
Nonetheless facts of non-existence must forever laugh at us,
Like a poor sort of memory – remember? – that only works backwards.
Stephano Pereira is an undergraduate in philosophy at the University of Florida. He likes reading his poems to his parakeet, Ambergris.