My business is words. Words are like labels,
Or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
As if words were counted like dead bees in the attic,
Unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings.
I must always forget how one word is able to pick
Out another, to manner another, until I have got
Something I might have said...
But did not.
Your business is watching my words. But I
Admit nothing. I work with my best, for instances,
When I can write my praise for a nickel machine,
That one night in Nevada: telling how the magic jackpot
Came clacking three bells out, over the lucky screen.
But if you should say this is something it is not,
Then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny
And ridiculous and crowded with all
The believing money.