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 cleanse

    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 eloquently，

    praising its slick and intersecting

    rivers of air， its stately calms

    and furious interrogations，

    its flutelike lingerings and passionate

    reproofs， 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 perfectly describe.