Invisibility

If no one reads it, is a poem there?
Of course it is, someone had to create
The syllables, expose them to the air
And having done so, sit around and wait.
A lacking audience does not undo
The effort put into the poem first.
Imagine if the poet never knew
That no one read the poem, but was cursed
Like Milton or like Homer, to lack sight,
And therefore could not read it for himself;
Imagine even that, as someone might,
He wrote it and then laid it on a shelf
Far from his mind; it still exists, and so
This poem will. It still lacks readers, though.