Which weighs more — fantasies or textbooks?
Even assuming a sample of each withstands
Comparison, halves crumble in your hands,
Inept, inapt like sinister and dexterous.
Something’s irrepressible in textures
Made of elusiveness and sediments;
They rise from the page, inspiring in the lectures
Buoyant rigor, volatile impediments.
Volume’s the conundrum: It is and they are
Expansion of clouds and journals that lie on the shelf,
Too soft — versus hard — versus loud — to embrace or debar
A measure in common: The lifetimes contained in one self.
Sinister and dexterous – The Latin roots of these two words — sinister and dexter — mean “left” and “right.” The modern English adjectives do not have this paired meaning.