First Instructions Last

The last A and B were joined along the dotted line,
(marked C) but could not be stuck for lack of glue,
and so, in time (which is turpentine)
everything else will undo
and never again be repaired.

Furniture will turn to sticks,
fractions will outnumber wholes, and unpaired
nature will lose its patent to fix
itself, and when the beaks and wings of birds
lie among the scattered limbs and leaves of trees
then, between assorted mouths and ears, our words
will lie in heaps of ABC’s.