A poverty of language requires reading
between the lines: the eyes cannot see,
nor scents mean anything. No taste
or touch could jump out of nothing.
A trick, if there is one, is that meaning
cannot mean beyond the compulsions
of a body made for this time only.

Does one learn to understand a heart’s
diction? What words leap out of silence?
Why does one need to listen to whispers
of absence? Why do sounds of sorrow
and madness register the same timbre
where indifference is the sounding board?

Is this why we would rather tolerate poets?
They read and write between the lines,
and could not care less about the simple,
palpable grip of certainty bereft of clarity.
What is clearness if the whole truth hides
behind the unknown here and a dark there?

If meaning could not be found in one place,
here, why do we think we really understand?
Between the lines, we may yet begin to know
That we need to go there to be really here.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-30-12