Ars Poetica: Poem 2

American Poetry Review, The, Jul/Aug 2002 by Levin, Dana

would it wake the drowned out of their anviled sleep--

would it slip the sun like a coin behind their eyes--

The idea, the teacher said, was that there was a chaos

left in matter-a little bit of not-yet in everything that was--

so the poets became interested in fragments, interruptions--

the little bit of saying lit by the unsaid--

was it a way to stay alive, a way to keep hope,

leaving things unfinished?

as if in completing a sentence there was death--