Sense & Unreason

Late night staring in the clueless face of Chaos,
counting the days since it last made a difference –
since the long velvet tendrils came to comfort us,
shielding us from all manners of sense & unreason.

I am waiting in the half-light for some of your dead names,
for disarrayed semes to clutter my cathodes,
for my unblinking eyes to lap up the letters,
to restore them, perhaps, to their first function.

They say “a” was “an ox” & I believe them:
I see no reason to doubt their word.
I have not long enough studied the ancient world
to challenge the wisdom of old sages.