Sonnet on a Poem Never Written

Such are the little sweets we live by. Stuck
In the rain-blurred window of a paper-shop:
'Typeriter, per con, recondissioned Mark
Two Coronet' - it jittered to a stop,
Then, hopeful in parentheses, '(new ribbon)'.
So poignant seemed that candle in the dark
I kept it lit as far as the rose garden
(ugly in budless, blackened stubs) to plant,
Before the sweet melting sense of things could harden,
Some seed, or thumbprint, carve a song in bark . . .
Though life is more difficult of mastery than text
With what we know (words, tools, ideas given
Out of the heart's abundance) our least acts
Of hope are approximate blunders towards heaven.