So sad each and every poem
that peals perfectly in silent verse
while eyes scarcely linger to know them—
it is a modern attention curse.

Ovid, Dante, Vergil, Homer:
have any of them an audience today?
Audience? Ha! What a blatant misnomer,
for no one wishes to hear what they have to say.

And so the Chief among the Muses weeps
since if a poem is not read, it does not exist
except mute on paper, or else it sleeps
in a realm of darkness, silence, and forgetful mist.