BEFORE THE WRECKERS COME

The unread poem deteriorates;
Children break in, stealing punctuation
To sell as scrap. A lone comma remains,
Frantically trying to make it appear
That the poem's still a going concern.
Vagrant words slip in; the metre,
Once stern and unforgiving, is humble,
Running errands in exchange for drinks.

TEMPS

The woman I was used to seeing in the poem
Had left, taking only three commas and
A dented apostrophe. Another had moved in
But did not expect to be there long.
Her poem was being redone. The other inhabitants
Tried to pretend nothing had changed.
"It is just as I told you," God told me later
"People never like where you put them.
Keats  -- nice fellow, Keats -- originally hired
A tall, thin, nearsighted girl to appear in
La Belle Dame Sans Merci but Rossetti told her
She was born to be the Blessed Demoiselle
Since then, there have been at least twelve Belle Dames
Two of them, and by no means the worst, male."

FLAUBERT'S COMMA

In one of his letters Flaubert complains –

Or is he boasting? – that he spent the morning

Taking out a comma and the  afternoon

Putting it back in. The afternoon’s comma

Was, I have reason to believe, quite different

From the one removed in the morning.

Disgusted at Flaubert’s treatment,

It had crawled painfully across his desk

To hide in an ink-stain on the blotter.

Ever afterward, when he took inventory,

Flaubert was always one comma short;

It irritated him intensely. George Sand

Offered to give him one of hers;

He politely refused, not letting her see

That the thought of an alien comma

Had brought back his neurasthenia.