By Peter Taylor

I am the beginning of language.

 

The worn type heaped in my guts

with ink, grease, bits of paper

on which I have spelled the word

idea

as the world’s biography.

 

My guts fashioned

the invincible Roman

from a cauldron of impurities:

angular face, trim beard, spine

like a ramrod

from shoulder to foot.

 

Bodies of every sort

emerge

from my fire.

 

My legions

march across the page

into language,

thought clicks into place,

time

hardens into being.     

 

“Hell-box” was originally published by Descant