Why I Write

I didn’t start writing poems because 
I felt the indifference of nature,

or soon after my mother died
on a hot September day.

I never sat on a stone bench weeping with 
the blooming lilies and roses all around

or wrote because something was
black and broken inside me

or to correct the world’s injustices
or any such serious poetic stuff.

No, I write to save my deafness in the 
mouth of language before it’s all gone.