Che cos'e la poesia? or 'What (thing) is poetry?'

'Who dares to ask me that? Even though it
remains inapparent, since disappearing is its
law, the answer sees itself (as) dictated (dic-
tation). I am a dictation, pronounces poetry,
learn me by heart, copy me down, guard and
keep me, look out for me, look at me, dictated
dictation, right before your eyes:
soundtrack, wake, trail of light, photograph of
the feast in mourning.
'It sees itself, the response, dictated to be
poetic, by being poetic. And for that reason,
it is obliged to address itself to someone,
singularly to you but as if to the being lost
in anonymity, between city and nature, an
imparted secret, at once public and private,
absolutely one and the other, absolved from
within and from without, neither one nor the
other, the animal thrown onto the road,
absolute, solitary, rolled up in a ball, next to
(it)self. And for that very reason, it may get
itself run over, just so, the herisson, istrice in
Italian, in English, hedgehog.'
(Jacques Derrida, Che cos'e la poesia,1988)