Boxing the poems

And now it's time to box the poems, from Allen and Auden to Yevtushenko, the unknown cheek to quatrain with the known. I pause to read a few. Packing plods Like an elegy. It is almost impossible. The books throb, strain against the tape, threaten to split the boxes like asparagus spearing up through pavement. How will I heft these cartons, freighted with such Apennines of meaning, cupped with distilled seas of wry, sly, vibrant ponderous lines? It won't do to tell the movers -- they won't see the cardboard glow and pulse. I'll unpack them first -- in time, I hope.