Paper that lets the light
shine through, this
is what could alter things.
On their own, these lines emphasize what is most significant about paper in the poem, which is that it lets the light shine through and is capable of creating change. This first section of the poem raises an important question: what is it that can be altered by paper? The images that follow explore this.
These lines also suggest that there is a thicker kind of paper that does not allow light to shine through, and that the poem is not concerned with this type of paper. In the context of paper, tissue is thin, soft, and used for wrapping or protecting something or for hygiene. Fragility is a concern in this poem, both in the material sense and in the way we approach life.
Fine slips from grocery shops
that say how much was sold
and what was paid by credit card
might fly our lives like paper kites.
This stanza addresses economics and its role in human civilization by noting the influence that money and bills have in our lives. Food is necessary to sustain life, and the use of credit in order to purchase food is capable of "[flying] our lives like paper kites" (Line 24). A kite is an object that moves freely in the wind, but it is attached to a string that someone controls. This signifies the power that paper (portrayed as slips of business records) has over our lives. The last line affirms the freedom that expenditure grants us, but also notes that we are bound to its obligations. For example, if one buys on credit, one must pay it back or risk the consequences.
find a way to trace a grand design
with living tissue, raise a structure
never meant to last,
The speaker draws a parallel between the impermanence of paper and that of human skin. This is an image built from language: the word "tissue" (the title of the poem) ties it all together. In the context of paper, tissue is thin, soft, and used for wrapping or protecting something, or for hygiene. Living tissue is a group or layer of cells that work together to perform a specific function (e.g. skin, muscles, and connective tissue). The paper civilizations that the speaker imagines turn out to be made from living tissue. This has multiple meanings, the first being the human blood, sweat, tears, labor, and suffering that physically go into building civilizations. The second meaning is that while our human tissue is part of a "grand design," it is "never meant to last" (Lines 32 and 34). In other words, the nature of human tissue is that it is susceptible to time. Whether on the level of the individual or the civilization, nothing is permanent.
