Bill Knott

Here you will find the Poem Obsolescent of poet Bill Knott

Obsolescent

Bending over like this to get my hands empty
Rummaging through the white trashcans out back
Of the Patent Office I find a kind of peace 
Here in this warm-lit alley where no one comes.

Even the rats too they know that nothing new
Is going to get pitched out now--no formula,
Not one blueprint will ever be found in these
Bright bins whose futures are huge, pristine.

Old alleymouth grabbags my attention at times
I see the world flash by out there, glow-glow as
The floors of decontamination chambers-

I go back to my dull, boring search, foraging
For the feel it gives me of the thing which has
Invented me: that void whose sole idea I was.