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TO A POET, TO THE WEST
Richard Wilbur lives in Massachusetts and in Key West, Florida according to his dust jackets. If you set sail westward from San Diego you may find your dream of China, of the endless wall which draws the stares and wonder more foreboding more forbidden even than the city, which you visit to sate yourself of…
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FOYLES
Charing Cross Road booksellers woven amid theaters cramped sagging shelves an out of print Christine Evans, slim, collected works of those long forgotten never noticed a damp chill enfolds old leather as the door opens and shuts on a late February. Morning, my purchases sink in the plastic bag dancing as I walk to the…
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EPISTLES
In dreams I write letters to dead heroes beginning each Dear __________: I apologize for the intrusion but in your next life will you do the same, give up the desk in the patent office for dreams of brothers twins, one moving one fixed, stand before a jury, no testament to the Lower East Side.…
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TOKUSAN SPEAKS OF TEACHERS 鐵笛倒吹 二十
Why do you seek old Masters, they have no special gift. Your lineage is the surface of the sea never still, all waves. Your teacher has no answers, his silence instructs close your ears and listen, is that his breath you hear or only your own? In is out, out is in depending on where…
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ACT IV
He knew he should not have brought the gun. He hated guns, they served no purpose in his world of words. He wanted to look at it, to stare at it, really. He thought that if he did so he might be better able to write about the senselessness of the world in which he…
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LUNA
The perigee moon hangs heavily over the city clinging to the horizon as though it wishes to flee deep into the night turning away the attention in inevitably draws. We are pulled toward it by some deeply felt force that we know we dare not question, for we must honor the moon’s secrets as we…
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IN VINO VERITAS
He is convinced he is simply squeezing the sun out of each plump orb. The sun lies within, but he lets it kiss its skin goodbye before pouring the sunshine into the oak barrels where the sun will have time to concentrate until it slips over the lips perhaps on a cold autumn day and…
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PASSING
He has been gone over a year and they need to erect the headstone before the first hard freeze, but it has rained for several days and the ground is too soft. Although I can still hear his cackling laugh he lingers less and his smell is slowly fading from the old bomber jacket. First…
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COCOON
She imagines life is much like a cocoon in which she must remain or risk instant death. She does not recall coming here but know she must have done so in the not too distant past. That is the problem with cocoons, there is no memory prior to finding yourself within, but she doesn’t mind…
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SLAINTE
It is just that sort of summer day when the sparse clouds crawl ever more slowly across the city, peering down, as if wishing they could end their journey, knowing this won’t happen. On the fields of Falkirk and Culloden Moor stained with the blood of ancestors who, only now, claim me as one of…
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an old writer and his words 