Just as a sacred relic isn’t inherently sacred, and your special dishes aren’t inherently special, the techniques of poetry are not poetry. They are but a means to an end. Calling a piece of writing poetry is like putting your favorite salamander on the Endangered Species List, or getting UNESCO to declare all of your favorite places World Heritage Sites. Poetry is what we do to words when we want to make them holy again. Poetic language is the spirit that moved across the face of the waters; it is language with the talismanic power to illuminate the world around us. This makes it as essential as a face-mask at the moment, and as useful as hand-sanitizer. For it is in the darkest hours that we find ourselves most desperately in need of illumination.

We’re all here today because of mistakes we didn’t pay for. We’ve all dodged a thousand bullets to get to where we are today. And if we’re around after this coronavirus pandemic has run its course, it’ll be because we dodged dozens more. Much as I’d like to, I just can’t bring myself to believe that life (or “the Universe”) is nearly as fair as the Law of Karma suggests. All to the contrary, I think the world we live in is a profoundly unfair place, replete with randomness. The great English Reformer John Bradford saw this with unusual clarity. That’s why he mouthed these words to himself so often: “There but for the grace of God go I.”