One day, people who read poetry are given the gift of languages, of being able to read poetry in all the different languages. As they gorge themselves on the poetic riches they discover, the market, meager as it was, for poetry translations collapses. Translators turn to substitute teaching, babysitting, and landscaping. Soon, however, the readers' happiness vanes. With each wonderful poem they discover in other languages, they start to feel the absence of such poem in their own language. The more the find, the more they feel a sense of loss, a sense of negative poetry, a zone of emptiness that is poised to engulf them. They beg translators to go back to work and start translating again. The translators agree but drive a hard bargain: the poetry readers can keep their languages but must agree to never offer any criticism when a translator gets the meter and the rhyme of the poem but changes "ocean" to "sea".
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