The time of minor poets is coming. Goodbye Whitman,
Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach
beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good
friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine…
while the children are falling asleep and complaining about the
noise you’re making as you rummage through the closets for
your old poems, afraid your wife might’ve thrown them out with
last spring’s cleaning.
      It’s snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark
night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare your-
self to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face
turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza
(unknown to you) is hopelessly missing.
                                                  —after Aleksandar Ristovic