The Minister of Culture Gets His Wish Poem by Mark Strand

The Minister of Culture goes home after a grueling day at the office. He lies on his bed and tries to think of nothing, but nothing hap-pens or, more precisely, does not happen. Nothing is elsewhere doing what nothing does, which is to expand the dark. But the minister is patient, and slowly things slip away—the walls of his house, the park across the street, his friends in the next town. He believes that nothing has finally come to him and, in its absent way, is saying, "Darling, you know how much I have always wanted to please you, and now I have come. And what is more, I have come to stay."