1. Make the light word weigh
as much as the thing it tells
to isolate it from among
all the leaves it was lost in.
2. Make the loose word adhere
to the body of its referent:
smelt it into a thick and solid thing,
able to clash with the one next to it.
3. Don’t let its speech stick out
but impose the discipline
of speaking anonymously—
just another word in the line.
4. And don’t let the word flow,
like a river that keeps growing,
but channel the endless water
into parallel, unseen streams.
Translated by Richard Zenith