BAIT Poem by Cees Nooteboom

Poetry can never be about me,
nor I about poetry.
I am alone, the poem is alone,
and the rest is for the worms.
I stood in the street where the words live,
books, news, letters,
and waited.
I have always waited.

The words, their forms light or dark,
changed me into a darker or lighter person.
Poems passed by
and recognised themselves as things.
I saw it and saw myself.

This addiction will never end.
Squadrons of poems are searching for their poets.
Uncommanded they wander through the great district of words,
awaiting the bait of their perfect,
closed, concentrated, composed
and inviolable

form.