Atmosphere of Being Disappointed

There’s a book you’ve never read,
An old-fashioned, printed brick
Of paper pulp milled from felled

Forests in some less bookish,
Boskier patch of the globe,
Waiting at the post office

For you to come pick it up.
You’ve never read the author.
Only a few days ago

You’d never known of that name,
Much less encountered the work.
You saw a picture somewhere

Of an achingly remote,
Starkly beautiful village,
And then another picture

Of a solemn wall of books
The caption identified
As being the library,

Painstakingly collected,
Of the village’s noted
Poet. You were so taken

With those photos’ atmospheres—
Stern bookshelves and stern village—
That you ordered the poet

By mail, without having read
A single poem—poetry
Unavailable except

In hardback, as you’d expect.
Now you don’t want to visit
The post office for the book.

You dread the disappointment
If a thousand poems don’t yield
Whole worlds of such atmospheres.