The Future

Who or what
can beseech you now?

There are no origins
or general principles.

There is only this hole in the earth.

Can you still be afraid
then, for what you don't have,

and what you'll never have?

That despair is like an explosion
of understanding.

It can make you quite careless.

But the pain of not knowing
how to write—

Ah, says Fate, you have a treat coming.
And it was always so.

Copyright Credit: “The Future" from The Curious Thing: Poems by Sandra Lim. Copyright © 2021 by Sandra Lim. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc..
Source: The Curious Thing (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2021)