(Words from Akhmatova)

I found a word, somewhere
by the coast, caught in a bush.
Threading fingers in, I pulled
the word out—it was white.

The sea crashed all afternoon,
the long bars, gray and black
like smoke. The world was losing
color. I kept walking, along the cliffs,

searching for more words, wondering
who dropped the one I found
in the bush. High atop a ridge
I found a grave, a mildewed stone,

a green copper plate announcing
a buried poet, a man who suffocated
words until they turned white, invisible
on the page. He was an exile

in his day, lost in his own country,
lost in books, a man who killed many
words before they killed him.
Around his grave, I saw them ripening—the words,

white, and drooping under their own weight.

MB 2005

A found-words poem, in which each line uses a randomly chosen word from a poem by Anna Akhmatova.

I found a word, somewhere
by the coast, caught in a bush.
Threading fingers in, I pulled
the word out—it was white.