ideal reader

               ‘To serve the people,’
one must write for the ideal reader. Only for the ideal reader.
And who or what is that ideal reader? God. One must imagine,
one must deeply imagine
                     that great Attention.

—Denise Levertov, “Conversation in Moscow,” The Freeing of the Dust (New Directions, 1975)

[The poem is referencing the words of Pasternak.]