ON LEARNING OLD VOCABULARY Poem by Durs Grünbein

Words don't sleep in dictionaries. They hang about
On street corners, aimless, play with munitions,
Like kids that carry war inside even when it's done.
We never would've guessed, Herr Nobel, that dynamite
Might make them interchangeable: material, moral, art.
Particles that went flying from that day, articles

In all the scientific journals, thousands per subject -
A desert track of knowledge. And the great gulfs
Between this and that meaning of ‘Devotion',
The satellite pictures of ‘Delirium' or ‘Democracy'.

It's down to him, he destroyed it all, the baby face,
Who breathed in smog and blew it out as gold dust.
It's down to him, who sold the dawn for scrap.
Don't stop the dictation, you poets. Words don't sleep.