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“Le vide papier que la blancheur défend”
—Mallarmé

Poetry makes nothing happen.
Makes it happen like nothing else.
Nothing makes nothing happen like poetry.

That is why poets are legislators.
They make nothing happen.
Otherwise it would not.

When nothing does not happen,
We’re stuck with everything else
And no space at all for something.

Poetry cannot make anything
Not make me think
Nothing happens all the time

Inside the emptiness we’re made of
Like all we know we do not know.
Everything’s mostly nothing

More than whiteness letters                          
Like these in these lines                                
Desiderate.                                                     

And poetry depends on nothing.         
Like a red wheel barrow,                   
Nothing makes poetry happen.  

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