Dead Sea

Words are like salt -

they preserve memories
like olives' flesh about the present's stone;

they can corrode the iron fist
of a dictator

or kill a growing shoot of love.

They seasoned the white lies
I told myself
to keep an unreal dream
afloat
when it should have drowned
in common sense.

Like salt
words can stop a hurt
from swelling, poison filled:
the pen a lancet
on the skin of page.

As in weat, words show
that you have toiled,
pouring from a fevered brain
in vain if they do not move.

They can enhance the flavour
of a poet's love
or hide his lack of it
when novelty's gone off.

Words can make you thirst
for silence
like water, to fill
what's become empty
by too much expression;

often, though, it is a lack of words
which makes the salt in silence:
tears