Belated Maker

He glanced around for more

Useful material—

What was there to alter

The long trajectory

Of someone else’s life?

When you were introduced,

As dully as could be,

To Hopkins, Donne, and Pope,

Now read and reread in

Your kitchen, but back then

In an English classroom

On Long Island—island

Your Old Dutch ancestors

Clawed into the same years

Donne was telling off Death

While Death carried him off—

Something in you altered.

The room was bright. The poems

Were—how to put this—made.

They fit together. Clicked.

The world is full of made.

A cabinet-maker,

Your father made well-made

Things. You liked well-made things.

But something in there changed.

You wanted to make these

Well-made things, or something

In some sense made like them,

And what material

Didn’t concern you then—

He thought this to himself,

Half-a-century later,

And then wondered aloud,

Do you need the right thing,

Special material,

For the made to wind up

Transformative, something

Which was truly made, or

Is it just the making?

Is proper making, then,

The first step, not the last?

That’s what transforms you—

Making you do that gets

You your material.