Poems, when they succeed, use an entirely new language. They make you pause while reading, leave you perplexed, and raise questions. They lift a veil and reveal an unexpected, inexplicable, mysterious otherness. Poems address the deceitfulness of everyday language and common sense by stating something 'absolutely wrong,' as Leonard Cohen sang in one of his songs. The earliest poems in the German language were spells intended to heal sick horses. Of course, they could not do that, but that was their claim.