Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one. - W. H. Auden

Let us honour if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.