Pygmalian pauses to admire his bride

It isn't that I doubt that every block
of marble holds some future Galatea,
straining to be shorn of excess rock;
But how many possible Galateas are there?
It's not the line I write that haunts,
but for each word I use, twelve ghostly words--
each in its way as fitting and as right--
gutter like smoke, unwritten and unheard.
It's not the choice itself that paralyses;
It's the death of all those choices.
I wonder whether Michelangelo
(that seer of possibility in stone)
just before the hammer's shattering blow
heard the other could-be statues moan?
So with each word, the others fly
like chips or marble, or like bits of bone.
Her cheek emerges; other faces flee.
The dust settles. What is done is done.
I take her hand. Why was I so scared?
She's lovelier than I could have dared.