372 lines
9.1 KiB
Plaintext
372 lines
9.1 KiB
Plaintext
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Underground eXperts United
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Presents...
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[ Eight poems ] [ By Robert J Berry ]
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____________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________
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* THE MAKER * ISLAY * LIGHTHOUSES * AILSA CRAIG
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* CAVES * CYCLES * THE PIER * SNOW
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by Robert James Berry
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THE MAKER
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First
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I make a
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stark monochrome sketch
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Then throw the clay
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Turning my fingers
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To mould four senses
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Pedalling the treadle
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Last I hang the lips
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Hook the nose
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I am spattered with clay
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Flush with creation
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Overnight
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The head is put to rest
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under damp cloth
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I sleep with crossed fingers
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Today
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Cut from its pedestal
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The muscles have stiffened
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The mouth pouts
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Suddenly I have
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Gouged the eyes
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Brought my hands together
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and twisted the living thing
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into a slimy lump
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Again the wheel is turning
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With the whole of my hands
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Drawing the clay tall
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My feet under the spell
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I am remaking my head
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Not with faith
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But because I must
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ISLAY
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On her stomach's flat pan
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The otter cracks shellfish
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Then whiskers off
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To waterproof preen
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I turn to the unison strut of oystercatchers
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jabbing the strand
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and a horseshoe of basalt
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where seals snore
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You can catch their stink
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Morning is running now
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The mainland has unveiled
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Buoys on the swell
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in only a hat of cloud
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The winter light is beaten gold
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Brief ice
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The silence cogent
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As our ferry builds smoke
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noses into the sound
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I am stitching its wake
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into this sheet
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Feeling the patter of drizzle
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The gulls whirling
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LIGHTHOUSES
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The peat bricks and
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cleft wood
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burn lavender
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Tall
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Shadows permeate the solitude
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I continue to stoke the small blaze
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Lever the firetongs
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coax reticent wood
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to crackle
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A knot spits like a shooting star
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extinguishes at my ankles
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Out of the window
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Over the water
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are the rain-stained lights
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of another country
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The unaltering eye of the lighthouse
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crabbed to land's end
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In the condensation
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With my index finger
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I write your name
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Fascinated
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as the tall letters and arrowed heart drip
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When the fire grows flames
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The pane clouds
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and my other country is folded away
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under a wrapper of fog
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Your companionable blink put out
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I walk to my seat
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and sit with winter
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AILSA CRAIG
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A fang from the sea monstered floor of
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the straits
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Or the igneous hat of a wizard
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ruckling waves
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Grown in the swell's accent
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Fishermen mystify
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A moonwashed beacon in the spring tides
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In winter
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A gruff sea demon
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When gales utter guttural oaths
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and north atlantic booms
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This giant's toehold
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Slides under the world
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To become
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In evening calms
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A basalt pebble in the sea's playground
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In the geography of dream
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It is always inhabited
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A turret struck for birds
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A crag to cleave the sun in two
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On canvas
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Or off the rail of a ship
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It is what it always was
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Awesome Solemn
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CAVES
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Faith is secreted in caves
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Away from light
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Whooping like a pagan
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Here stones guard their
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most private grief
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Water drips from the vertigo
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With the virtue of patience
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Carved monstrances of rock
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The statuary of strange deities
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Daubed with the
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full stops of the world
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are fed shadow
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The dark is elephant-headed
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Silence has tongue
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Here faith
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Slays demons underfoot
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Calcifies fear as
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flues of stone
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Where bats are the only reverents
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men will block steps
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Cut out an auditorium of rock
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Bringing smoke music
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altars and assuaging gods
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Because man must banish forget
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The awful irreverence of death
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CYCLES
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Heat has mummified
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The flower's bells
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which shake like black castanets
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in the earth's drought oesphagus
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Over the graveyard
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Sun assaults the dead
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Dents crucifixes
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Cracks marble
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Chiselling its own epitaph
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White roofs that noon has charred clean
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Are like the waterless face
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of a clad woman
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stirring the dust with her sandals
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At her gate
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A pack dog is cannibalizing
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the blown stomach and muzzle
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of a brother
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Sight hobbles
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To lap a v-neck of sea
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between the land's blistered shoulders
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In another town
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Cloche the bells
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of a stricken god
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Thonged by light
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Soon sky is a torso of blood
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and Sun is
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humping its crooked back
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below the world
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Dusk stirs
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An acrimonious
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Chthonic god
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Dogs gather
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Man devours
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his mate
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Then the moon draws
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A narrow harelip
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and stars hang uncharitably
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From the noose of heaven
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THE PIER
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late afternoon is
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wet with light
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Two fishermen stroll
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the brawling surf
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A lizard
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decorates a sun-boiled stump
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Time has settled on the pier's
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dentistry of rotted timber
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its bicycles
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fishing pots and
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Stinking bait
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In the idle swell
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Sunburnt men
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dangle rods
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Two mating dragonflies hover
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Prehistorical as the
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horned monsters
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anglers pull in
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Reefed up below
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Are boats under black canvas
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and gulls lashed
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to the rocking water
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At the curve of the world
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Sun is a spitting apocalypse
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Stood close to pier's end
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A man scans the horizon
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for a morsel of sail
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and tosses a hissing butt
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in the heartbroken ocean
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Listening to the
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Slosh and
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amen of the sea
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SNOW
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Snow is
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Winter's linen
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Watch it print
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A white page
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Convert the firs and
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outlandish hills
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First snow is amnesia
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Lost memories eddying
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The flakes settle finally
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inducing sleep
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Its coma domes the world
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In the high country
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For cold clenched farmers
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The year is finished
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The nativity sheep are
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bodies to burn
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Our Father is a splinter of frost
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Against a snow cliff
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December dusk bleeds like a sacrifice
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Then overnight men feel an uncanny stillness
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The air is hoar wrought
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Snow utters silently
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From lungs of ice
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Morning
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From the timber church
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Bells toll like creation
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The thaw scrunches with life
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Children scream build
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The hills burn like bonfires
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in the blue skies
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Winter has gone out
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The world is white as sainthood
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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uXu #488 Underground eXperts United 1999 uXu #488
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ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/texts/uxu/
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