You're close. I'm making the point that, in modern English, no other verb is available for the act of creating a poem.

Here's a quote from the fantasy novel The Way of Kings that always appealed to me:

>> "Many of our nuatoma -- this thing, it is the same as your lighteyes, only their eyes are not light--"

>> "How can you be a lighteyes without light eyes?" Teft said with a scowl.

>> "By having dark eyes," Rock said, as if it were obvious. "We do not pick our leaders this way. Is complicated. But do not interrupt story."

For an example from reality, I am forced to tell people who ask me that the English translation of 姓 is "last name", despite the fact that the 姓 comes first.

Similarly, the word for writing a poem is "write", whether this creates a written artifact or not. And the poem is literature whether a written artifact currently exists, used to exist, or never existed.

(Though you've made me curious: if the Iliad wasn't literature until someone wrote it down, do you symmetrically believe that Sophocles' Sisyphus is no longer literature because it is no longer written down?)