Let me read you a small series of poems on poetry.
This one is for Robert Lowell, who
passed away last year suddenly.
"I sit here thinking I should write
in dread of stepping outside the room to find nothing exists.
Here, I can make something exist.
There, I find myself nonexistent in doubt, an empty space.
Poem in hand, I can walk out of the room in safety.
I tack it upon a wall.
The emptiness gathers around it and begins to read.
Two.
Where is the image that will free me
of the necessity of living by taking over the hardships?
I am asking for two lives.
And I have only been able to express
the longing of this one, which is called writing the poem.
Three.
My writing teaches me how to die tomorrow
when the weather improves by dying with the sun,
a law unto itself, as I am.
There is this happiness."