The Marks of our Being

The Marks of our Being

They’re funny things, are names,
As they rise and fall with fashion,
And so fluky in their claims
For what newborns they can ration
From the finite pool of name-less youths
To whom they shall be handed –
To turn them into Bens and Ruths,
And leave them tagged and branded.
And sometimes from colloquial obscurity
Comes suddenly a surge into maturity,
As sweeping ’cross the country comes
The choice of sev’ral-thousand mums.
And maybe just as quickly as they flourished,
So we find them lost and undernourished:
Out-of-date and now a joke,
Just withered names on withered folk.
They’re funny things, are names:
They’re just sounds and signs and smoke.