George Bowering

The World, I Guess 

If you don’t write it down, the poem will go away again,

back to wherever it came from, maybe a dead person

or Mars.  Even if you’re doing something else, like trying

to have a bowel movement, as is often the case with me,

not meaning to be vulgar or comical, but

a planetoid is another possibility, if that’s the right word.

Think about all the poor mute Miltons who had something

else to do; they could have changed the world,

or at least the poetry world, or North America.  But

even if you write it down, here’s the problem, you will be

mis-writing, because you are mis-reading.  You have to accept that

if you want to spend a life at this job.

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