"Poetry makes nothing happen."

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Poetry makes something happen, after all:
poetry readings, poetry submissions,
poetry contests, poetry prizes, sections of poetry in bookstores,
canonic anthologies, workshops, courses in schools,

there is an entire industry, employing thousands,
counting part-timers in kitchens at night,
a market or something that wants to be
buying and selling, but more selling than buying.
Does all of this make something happen?

Is it counted as something by the mysterious ones
who count the world's significance and make the significance?
And in the legitimacy of these awful beings
does poetry play a part?

If you asked one -- a politician controlling grant money --
he (she? it?) might say
in that hollowed tone that says what it thinks
another thinks,

that "poetry is the bedrock of a civilized society"
or something equally bedrocky
and null -- so null,

and the words would be simultaneously
a vote for poetry and a vote against,

because anyway nobody buys or sells bedrock
and nobody cares about it.
The real question is whether power stores poetry

by the bedside and, if so,
does he read it, actually read it

and, if he does, does something happen? Did it make something happen?
Did it make nothing happen?
What would count as happening for him?

I think poetry -- not the thing, I doubt there's a thing
but say the industry -- the activity, the practice, the living it --
is like Hollywood, a place negligible from a foot away,
but enter it and suddenly it's everything,

not only makes things happen but is what happens
and is the feel of the happening, and
that is where you and I stand now?
Or has the sweet foot crept out of the circle?

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