after Saeed Jones’s A Spell to Banish Grief
Only when you can delete your Submittable account,
and box your poetry books into a carton
shipped to a country without birds or borders; only
when you let go of the feeling of falling
between the cut and argument of lines
into the slough of sleep; only when
no dénouement, or turn of phrase, or assonance,
or irony can leave you grasping or breathless;
only when libraries stop making you wonder
about wonder; only when you can leave
scribbled-on pages in the rain, their vulnerability
a requiem to roadkill; only when you see
the white page as others do – as blank vistas of
dead paper to be filled by nothing, only
when you are emptied of anything to feel, say, and by
saying, I mean, write, unable to sharpen
the edge of your pen grinding against paper;
only then, poet, only then, call yourself
healed of this affliction.
Photo by melanfolia меланфолія on Unsplash
