Poetry is a Kind of Money

Poetry is a kind of money

whose value depends upon reserves.

It’s not the paper it’s written on

or its self-announced denomination,

but the bullion, sweated from the earth

and hidden, which preserves its worth.

Nobody knows how this works,

and how can it? Why does something

stacked in some secret bank or cabinet,

some miser’s trove, far back, lambent,

and gloated over by its golem, make us

so solemnly convinced of the transaction

when Mandelstam says love, even

in translation?