‘What colour is the duck’s quack?’ ‘Which questions are untrue?’
Poetically appealing, these are examples
of the error of ascribing characteristics
to categories which can’t harbour them.

A question can be neither true nor false.
A sound cannot have colour as long as words
mean anything. Mistakes of category
misrepresent reality which is elusive

enough without a versifier’s abusive
insistence that the drake’s spring quack is green
and that in itself a question must be false
if it asks him what he’s doing or where he’s been.