GENERIC LOST WORK

So often we must read
of someone’s lost works:
buried in debris
of mislaid inheritance,
destroyed within old furnaces
once museums or libraries,
scattered forever
by robbers of the tombs.

Because some loss,
into anyone’s death, may fall,
because what’s gone
seems even to heighten
those fragments surviving,
I am planning ahead:
may this lost poem protect
however many it can.