Poetry is the cuckoo that sits upon expectant life
While God is absent. Something vague and distant
From a far field, the cuckoo pleases all of us
Without eggs to incubate. But if you want the grief
Of an orphan, or a mother's absence,
Think of the cuckoo's global reach, its success

At spreading its parenthood on borrowed warmth:
As poets do, in a manner of speaking.
Here is the nest, the unsuspecting language
That means no harm to anything in creation;
And here, the poem, the subtle invasion
That drops one egg, of both birth and damage.