What he leaves out takes our breath away.
What he doesn’t worry about is the genius.
It’s a sign he won’t use signs
to reflect on the sorrowful nature of the whole thing.
Sadness is all about what he doesn’t include.
It isn’t that he’s sad, or mournful emptiness
is an elaboration by an aesthetic carving-knife.
He is actually quite joyful. The quality of his mind
is like the moment when someone writes “The Raven”
in beautiful cursive at the top of the page—
and the poem is written as if a child understood already
the beauty we notice when things begin to age.