Yet wherefore speak?
Why call upon a few weak words to say
What is already written in the hearts
Of all that breathe?
-Worthsworth
Poetry and poets are substitutes for something very, very basic, primitive and transcendent emotion. Language has hard limits. Watching video of players on the field after the collapse (his heart stopped) of Damar Hamlin in the Bengals game on Monday night, I realized that, when you strip away all the layers of advertisement and broadcasting and competition and fandom, there's just this very human thing—this inexpressible thing—that has a purely universal dimension; you're watching soldiers in a time of war; it could be a battlefield 3000 years ago. Grief, death—the primordial awareness of loyalty and love–still peeks through, pushes through our overstimulated, over-amplified lives and speaks, is present, and has a presence.