A poem on a familiar theme by the Dutch writer Gerrit Komrij

NOLI ME TANGERE

Verse is just ballast. Make it disappear.

You can demolish it if by some code

You cause a bomb (beneath the part that’s there)

Or landmine (in the last line) to explode.

Make sure you light the fuse. A pious hope.

There is no bomb. Yet you’re obliged, yes, come

What may, to swell the verse to its full scope.

Only beyond a slalom lurks the bomb.

At such a point, why do you not resist,

Stop fiddling with it, let it go, desist?

The cord is cut. Yet still you would persist.

A poem must be round to not exist.