mute

though you work for a poverty
of signs, paralyzed

by revelation
(of the performative
nature of anything at all)

you let it carry you
along -- an abstract music
essentially mute,

in the form of a black
and white striped box

that you lose from scene
to bleeding scene

hence your proverbial certainty
tells us nothing about the recycling

of certain symbols, their interaction
with warlike animals, or their desire
for surrender to the kind

of being for whom the raw
material of language

produces simple circles
and squares

St. Paul, you recognize,
must have entered this labyrinth
with a map