Words

Carl Spitzweg

Words

Words are my instruments but not my servants;  

by the white pillar of a prince I lie in wait 

for them. In what the hour or the minute invents, 

in a web formally meshed or inchoate, 

these fritillaries are come upon, trapped:  

hot-coloured, or the cold scarabs a thousand years 

old, found in cerements and unwrapped.  

The catch and the ways of catching are diverse.  

For instance this stooping man, the bones of whose face are like

the hollow birds' bones, is a trap for words.  

And the pockmarked house bleached by the glare 

whose insides war has dried out like gourds  

attracts words. There are those who capture them  

in hundreds, keep them prisoners in black  

bottles, release them at exercise and clap them back.  

But I keep words only a breath of time 

turning in the lightest of cages - uncover  

and let them go: sometimes they escape for ever.

Keith Douglas

“The catch and the ways of catching are diverse.” Golly. It’s taking everything in me not to gush over this poem.

 It’s freakin’ fantastic.