The Flimsiness of Letters
“All the little emptiness of love!” ~ Rupert Brooke
What kind of letters? Letters in a clay
Configuration, cuneiform shapes gone
For thousands of declines in their array
In sunsets, twilights and each hopeless dawn
Were letters that avoided hope until
Some scholars cracked their code in Europe. Baked
Hard clay gave up its meanings. To distil
A letter on thin paper now long raked
By Brooke’s biographers is still a failed
Attempt. Perhaps it says that he had made
A child in Taatamata. Words are veiled
In broken English. Meanings are betrayed.
Her letter and its letters fail to speak
Their sense. Love’s flimsy essence turns oblique.
~ Phillip Whidden