Chance
Astonished by everything I read even crap
Amazed by the mathematics of diversity
And the accidents which language in perversity
Condemns to utterance beneath my ailing pen
Leaving me the most uneloquent of men
Still the logos of chance inspires me
What chance that you and I as strangers
Will in a lifetime write the same poem or
That on one day all poems will be the same
Words layout punctuation such as it is
Better what is the chance on one day
Of l80 identical letters to the New Yorker
Being opened by drones peripheral to the hive
Each seeing the same poem many times over
As if although unintended some conspiracy
(Oh not another sheltered poem on poverty
Or one that feigns a labored true confession
Not some simple academic’s moral lesson
Or the giddy prance of post-modern obfuscation
Nor some diagram of heaven gilded by elation)
Say it is accepted even as a lark
A flight of poets sharing recognition
Splitting the fee granting the rights
Noting publication in their precious vitae
Reprinting later in a chapbook by them all
But do not let the lawyers near them
That class of souls of matching mintage
Who’ll carbon-date each scribble’s vintage
So they may litigate first authorship forever
Each brief no doubt the same as every other
3/l-3/5/95, 6/9-6/l0/96, 12/30/97, l/l4/98
Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission
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