Grief hides in the opening lines of "Mourning & Modern Knowledge", dressed up as physics. "Permutations of motion though matter; / the ecstatic union of void & fire; / mutation arrayed / in differential display" sounds like a lecture on the universe. The alliteration (motion and matter, differential and display) gives it a cool, polished surface. Then the speaker breaks the spell with a question: is this kind of language "the only way / for the feeling to fade"? The abstraction, we realise, was a strategy. The speaker is trying to think the pain out of the body, to make it "escape / from my bones."
The answer arrives as a single word on its own line: "No." After the long, ornamental sentences, the bluntness lands hard. It is the poem's pivot, and the white space around it works like a held breath. From there the vocabulary changes. The speaker admits to being caught in a maze of "oxymoronic structures", and the phrase is apt, since the first stanza's "union of void & fire" was already a pairing of opposites. Language here is both the only tool and the thing that confines. The speaker locates the weak point exactly: "the point / where concept concedes to content," where "precision / & all measurement / reach their limitation." Even so, "grammar still remains needed / for practical reasons." That last phrase is deliberately flat, almost bureaucratic. It makes a small joke of how far the grand opening has fallen. Words cannot fix anything, but we still have to use them.
The central image is the lake. Thrown stones make "unbounded expansions" that "ripple & sway," "reverberate / in brief undulations, / & sink / slowly / until they can be seen / no longer." The layout does as much work as the words. The lines step inward and drift down the page, and "slowly" sits alone as if sinking itself. The break between "seen" and "no longer" makes us watch the disappearance happen. The ripples seem to stand for the speaker's "frustration & unease / echoing through me", and perhaps for the way a lost person's influence spreads and fades.
Then comes the poem's most interesting turn. "Nothing ever / disappears completely…" sounds like a consoling scientific truth, and the trailing ellipsis lets it hang for a moment. The next line undercuts it: "but you're too far away / for me to care." This is the first time a "you" appears, and the line is startling. Judging by the context, it may be numbness or self-protection, a way of refusing a comfort that feels false. Either way, the poem will not let the speaker, or us, off easily. Even if "absences linger within / every presence," the speaker insists "there's nothing comforting / in that knowledge." The title now makes sense: "modern knowledge" can explain that things persist but cannot make that persistence feel like anything.
The form supports this. There is no rhyme and no steady metre. Long, abstract lines give way to short declaratives, and the spacing is scattered and irregular. The ampersands, used in the title and throughout, give the text a compressed, modern look. They also keep the speaker's voice casual and unpolished next to the scientific diction. The ending is the barest moment of all. "What remains of the lost" gets its own line, followed by white space, and then the verdict, "is not enough." The sentence is split so that the reader, like the speaker, waits for the conclusion to arrive.
The poem is worth reading because it refuses two easy comforts. It does not pretend that science, with its ideas of conservation and persistence, can heal grief. It also does not pretend that poetry can. The name it appears under, wordsforghosts, suggests words offered to the absent, and the poem is honest that those words fall short. What it gives instead is an accurate account of that shortfall, and the speaker's frustration is the nearest thing to company it offers.