Turn-Outs Never Have the Best Views

Grammarians, ancient
And modern, scrutinize
Each tattered scrap for clues

How best to reconstruct
What’s left of the markings.
Their creativity

Yields a variety
Of translations. You could
Rip to shreds your own works

And pay someone to guess
The missing passages,
See if that improves them,

But how could anyone
Care like grammarians
Investing vocations

In the truly ancient?
Once, someone wrote something
Some part of which survives.