On the Late Occasion

There’s a trifling way in which
All poems are occasional.
Reading through a motley stack

On a sunny afternoon
In a liminal season,
New and old from old and young,

Some straining against syntax
To make a mother tongue feel
Entangled as translation,

Some literal translations,
Some that read like transcriptions
Of kitchen conversations,

The triggering occasions
Of each one begin to jump
Out of the lines and choices,

The poems that start from a word,
A face, a scene, a private
Love or grief or resentment,

A desire to do something
To this damned language, a wish
To bind an old wound, a rage

At a recent news event.
What would it even look like,
A poem on no occasion?