not really imperfect

…Japanese poets and painters might say with Yves Bonnefoy: imperfection is the acme of achievement. The imperfection, as has been noted, is not really imperfect: it is a voluntary act of leaving unfinished. Its true name is awareness of the fragility and precariousness of existence, an awareness of that which knows itself to be suspended between one abyss and another. Japanese art, in its most tense and transparent moments, reveals to us those instants—because each is only that, an instant—of perfect equilibrium between life and death. Vivacity: mortality.

—Octavio Paz, "The Tradition of the Haiku," Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), translation by Helen Lane

only abyss below

Often a poem must end with the bottom dropping out—and the reader must try to enjoy the free-fall without screaming too much.

stanza break

He would break his lines, but would never leave space between lines. That blank space was abyss.

holding on

Books for some of us are handholds over the abyss.

bottom drops out

Until it’s too late, a reader can’t be certain that a space or a pause in the poem is not an abyss.