Today may be as good a day as any
to come to terms with what we know is true.
There may be some who have.  There may be many.
None of them can tell us what to do.

You sit at the center of nothing.  Squint as you will,
you’ll never talk your way out of this.
You could just keep your mouth shut.  Still,
silence has an eloquence.  You may miss

the point of what I’m trying to say here.
But that’s the point.  To put it all together
you have to take it apart.  If I appear—
what do I want to say?—as if another

intelligence has made its home in my head,
it doesn’t matter.  Whoever has control
will say whatever serves by being said.  
The sum of the parts is greater than the whole

when what we’re talking about is literature—
poetry in particular—and how extremely
important it seems to be when it’s obscure.
Although to say it seems somewhat unseemly

it’s hard to do something hard and make it look easy,
which may be why it’s done by very few.
The famous poet today, adroit as you please, he
made look hard what any drunk can do—

conceal a meaning in sound.  But I’m afraid
I’ve thrown my one chance to make it away.
I wanted to show you how a poem is made,
but you may have understood what I meant to say.