In this week’s choice, academic and critical discourse – and indeed poetry itself – come in for some elegant ribbing
But Those Unheard
The next poem we can’t actually see.
In fact it may not be there at all.
But if it was there it would solve several problems
In the poems that we can see. We infer its existence
From what we believe to be its effects.
It may be a completely new kind of poem
Or something similar, that has leverage
On existing poems, being itself unreadable
And extremely heavy, and moving at a high speed.
Heavy invisible rapid poem-like entities
Which may never be seen or felt, almost certainly underlie
Existing poems, and may outweigh them
As the dead outnumber the living.
And they have an activity, as the dead
Can bend existing poems and hold them together.
But these are not dead poems
(We haven’t got a name for them yet).
They may explain shivering, wrinkles or otherwise unexplained anomalies
In poems we thought we understood. Lacunas,
Leanings, hesitations, small lapses in grammar, odd coinings,
Unexplained dashes or ashes where commas might be expected,
A wandering semicolon. Misspellings we pretended to ignore.
Two instances of hapax legomena in seventeeth century Siamese poems
Could be explained by a heavy unwritten poem-like entity (about the size of
Denmark)
Passing rapidly very close to them or through them.
In fact the whole field of textual criticism
Has become much more exciting
As we study here underground in darkness and close to absolute silence
Poems we thought we remembered.
