The Poems I Have Not Written

    I'm so wildly unprolific， the poems

    I have not written would reach

    from here to the California coast

    if you laid them end to end.

    And if you stacked them up，

    the poems I have not written

    would sway like a silent

    Tower of Babel， saying nothing

    and everything in a thousand

    different tongues. So moving， so

    filled with and emptied of suffering，

    so steeped in the music of a voice

    speechless before the truth，

    the poems I have not written

    would break the hearts of every

    woman who's ever left me，

    make them eye their husbands

    with a sharp contempt and hate

    themselves for turning their backs

    on the very source of beauty.

    The poems I have not written

    would compel all other poets

    to ask of God： "Why do you

    let me live？ I am worthless.

    please strike me dead at once，

    destroy my works and cleanse¹

    the earth of all my ghastly

    imperfections." Trees would

    bow their heads before the poems

    I have not written. "Take me，"

    they would say， "and turn me

    into your pages so that I

    might live forever as the ground

    from which your words arise."

    The wind itself， about which

    I might have written so eloquently²，

    praising its slick and intersecting

    rivers of air， its stately calms

    and furious interrogations，

    its flutelike lingerings and passionate³

    reproofs⁴， would divert its course

    to sweep down and then pass over

    the poems I have not written，

    and the life I have not lived， the life

    I've failed even to imagine，

    which they so perfectly⁵ describe.