Of course, he's the last person I should call 'the poet', given that he's never written a line, and still thinks he's written too much. He has no, absolutely no, interest in writing poetry, he says.
The time of poetry is over, he says, and so is the time of those interested in or feel close to poetry. He, granted, is interested (to an extent) and feels close (in some ways) to poetry, but, in the end, has nothing to do with poetry. It has nothing to do with him!
Poetry's retracted, he says. It's withdrawn back into itself. The tide is out. Somewhere, far away, poetry is alive, lost in itself. Somewhere or other, there is poetry pressing darkly into itself.
And he, who is he? A beachcomber? A tide-out walker? Not even that. For what does he understand of what has been left by poetry? How can he even read the signs of the former presence of poetry?
A geographer could point out the drumlins and eskers left by the disappearing glacier. But what he can point out? What could he understand? Even the withdrawal of poetry is closed to him.
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The doors are closed, tight shut against him. The doors are closed! He's too late. And if the doors were open? If he forced himself through? There would be nothing there, nothing at all. A wasteland. A shore without a sea.
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