To help us comprehend the magnitude of absence

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee; 
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.        
          Ezra Pound

You’ll find labels describing what is gone:

an empress’s bones, a stolen painting

of a man in a feathered helmet

holding a flag-draped spear.

A vellum gospel, hidden somewhere long ago

forgotten, would have sat on that pedestal;

this glass cabinet could have kept the first

salts carried back from the Levant.

To help us comprehend the magnitude

of absence, huge rooms

lie empty of their wonders—the Colossus,

Babylon’s Hanging Gardens and

in this gallery, empty shelves enough to hold

all the scrolls of Alexandria.

My love, I’ve petitioned the curator

who has acquired an empty chest

representing all the poems you will

now never write. It will be kept with others

in the poet’s gallery. Next door,

a vacant room echoes with the spill

of jewels buried by a pirate who died

before disclosing their whereabouts.

I hope you don’t mind, but I have kept

a few of your pieces

for my private collection. I think

you know the ones I mean.

"In the Museum of Lost Objects" by Rebecca Lindenberg