diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/cbook/__init__.py b/lib/matplotlib/cbook/__init__.py
index e9502535d0ca..ddfe42aabfd2 100644
--- a/lib/matplotlib/cbook/__init__.py
+++ b/lib/matplotlib/cbook/__init__.py
@@ -15,7 +15,6 @@
 import operator
 import os
 from pathlib import Path
-import re
 import shlex
 import subprocess
 import sys
@@ -567,14 +566,6 @@ def get_realpath_and_stat(path):
     return realpath, stat_key
 
 
-# A regular expression used to determine the amount of space to
-# remove.  It looks for the first sequence of spaces immediately
-# following the first newline, or at the beginning of the string.
-_find_dedent_regex = re.compile(r"(?:(?:\n\r?)|^)( *)\S")
-# A cache to hold the regexs that actually remove the indent.
-_dedent_regex = {}
-
-
 class maxdict(dict):
     """
     A dictionary with a maximum size.