We live in the age of names —
sticks and stones will break our bones
and names will surely kill us

because there is no answer to a name,
it deals a fatal silence.
It says John.

But what about the word on the other side of a name
it names an action or a thing,
isn’t it fatal to say arise or a rose?

Thinking crash lands in a name —
but something slithers from the wreckage,
free from depiction, beyond the boundary,

a hint, a yen, a glint, a go.
And it begins to know.