Riddles

Being cheap, I haunt the dollar book carts for whatever shows up that catches my eye, like this by John Hollander called En Revenant D'Auvergne:

To sing old songs to little children in

A foreign language made intime thereby;
To pose a riddle, putting one more spin
On words to make them twitter as they fly;
To make words be themselves, taking time out
From all the daily work of meaning, to 
Make picture puzzles of what they're about
And thereby keep the constancy in true;
To feel the quivering figure in the rock
Of fact; to know the thrill of the absurd,
Cutting the key with which you might unlock
The chambers of the heart of any word--
These in their faith and hope remain as much
The works of love as all the plays of touch.

I used to, when young, play the game of repeating words over and over until they were bled dry of meaning and become simple sounds, random sequence of consonants and vowels with a certain cadence, but as empty as the creaks of trees or clash of rocks one on another. They were heavy as punctured balls, each with its own pattern of cavitation and collapse. How strange you parched words were: responsive objects gone lifeless, everyday items alienated almost more than words of other languages are. 

But you resuscitate quickly, plump up with references and implications as soon as you're passed and headed in conversation, touched and in play. How you flash as you fly, but you scare me when you play dead.