In Europe, someone is always stealing famous paintings, 
as if it were so easy to dehistoricise the academy, 
to sever a father's tongue and replace the past 
with mute quadrilaterals of dust. Out the window 

of the overnight bus maple leaves are dying in style 
while the great country and western songs I love 
remain baroque, sentimental, and full of life.
Same tangle of grief and salvation, same wife, 
same kids, same house, same city—
what changes is the book you are writing 
and the faces around the table discussing the grass 
Walt Whitman becomes on the earth within us.

Imagine that gallery full of stolen masterworks 
and then imagine the museum of the never-created, 
Schubert's slide guitar, the graphic novels of El Greco.
Imagine the movies Sappho would have made!