541 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
541 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
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-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
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-- --
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-- --
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-- poems from --
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-- --
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-- HOME --
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-- --
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-- by --
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-- --
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-- TOBY OLSON --
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-- --
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-- --
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-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
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-----------------------------------
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2.
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It could surely become more involved: we'd
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say things about structure
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the sexual possibilities
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of every flat surface in the house
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and the round surfaces also
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and the pointed ones: all
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the possible pleasures of invention.
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There are new objects constantly:
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this week
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a table and a chest
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We walk out in our new coats:
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we become more involved with each other.
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4.
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I cannot altogether formulate what I mean
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Our love is bondage or a migraine
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headache we possess in common
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Slow poison of my stomach
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I cannot for long eat food in another place
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And then too, you come, sideways
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often at the wrong times into my life
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my thoughts
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Agent
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who would not like a fist fight
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with someone he did not know
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You have to touch them
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which is intimate.
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5.
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Sometimes, when we have spoken,
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you have carried those things with you,
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however foolish: to work
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in the lunch room -- I have
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taken them too: the specific
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touch of your body, whatever woman
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I talk to, and you
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are doing the same
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with the men: we
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enter the conversation
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together.
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6.
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Outside the wind is serious
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that which enters
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the cracked window
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is tentative. we believe that
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we have controlled something
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tangible. in our lives, we say
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we live in the eye
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of a hurricane.
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down
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bay-side, the wind is furious.
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unaccountably: the ocean
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is flat and calm: at the same time
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in our lives, we say
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hard things to one another: hate,
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and then we love each other:
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out, at the Cape's end
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it comes together.
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17.
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Fresh blossoms
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as if it weren't enough
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that you left this morning
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and I discover them
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alone, and can't give them a name.
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It's Fall already
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the blossoms seem new though,
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yellow, possibly
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Queen Anne's Lace? or King Henry's
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Venerable Crawler --
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who knows
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what evil lurks in a name?
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The wind
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is no longer warm
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it goes _through_ the weeds
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and not over them as before,
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tho the sun's still bright.
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Gone,
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and so I have to write this lament
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doubly for the two of us: myself yesterday
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and the one who is here now
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not knowing the names of flowers
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foreign in his posture
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bent down over them,
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a gesture of protest against
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absence.
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Who is it that shakes his head then
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and stands up?
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the flowers
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yield to the fantasy
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of a name: Rag Weed, moves
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in the shared power
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of the wind.
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Miriam,
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there are platitudes so deep
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in the heart's core
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we can't speak them,
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the way even I stand here
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is conditional,
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call them
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matters of biology:
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flowers are brought up regardless
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of names,
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hearts do
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_cleave_ to one another
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beyond imagery. brutal
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& real, locked
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in the same skin
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is bondage.
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And you are my twin,
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converse of the face seen in these buds
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complement into symmetry
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light side of the shadow
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that falls over his shoulder now
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the clouds closing --
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it's Fall.
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I walk toward the house leaving
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the history of that gesture:
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the bent body, the look quizzical,
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the strange buds --
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and enter the door followed
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only, by the first drops of rain.
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21.
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Last summer, we put in many hours
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of work around the house.
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the other night
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with friends, we talked
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of all the work we'd done
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and other things
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such
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sad simplicity
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of time, that splits the distance. you
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were sitting on the couch,
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our friends were there
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and gathered
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in the matrix
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of our talk
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a distance
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from the things we said
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and from each other
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yes
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in time, but also
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in the spaces of the room itself:
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the smoke that made it tangible.
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How hard a thing, and seldom
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that our faces
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make an imprint, other
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than in air . your hair
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keeps growing longer.
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what could I expect?
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but that last summer
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takes its measurement in hair:
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the length of it you carry
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in a changing way, a different
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tilting of your head
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your hand
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that brushes
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hair away from face.
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And of our friends, their talk.
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And of myself
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who's carried back these days
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to funerals.
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or of another friend
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who finds it hard to eat:
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that I can see such action in his face,
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that is his own,
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but takes me back
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into my life: my father's
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inability to eat
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. . . and saw his death prefigured
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in his actual face.
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The sad
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simplicity of time
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we fill with gesturing
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and sex. the hair
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grows natural and like
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a forest
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or a tumor, is
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a kind of clock, and yet the words
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we think
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can form a closure
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as in sutures
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of the skull, or make a fusion
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as the smoke does
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standing
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in the air
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that only separates,
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defines the time as distance.
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And of these words I speak
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I'd form a matrix or a web
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. . . but not a web, no
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metaphor
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or image: but an action
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so to fix my friends and you
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in time.
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I do not mean this poem.
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I mean an insult or a real whip.
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We are our faces, certainly.
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we face each other
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when we talk
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we love
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to put our faces close together.
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saving face
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or facing things
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that happen
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or another face, that we
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should think our faces sacred things,
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we cover
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or reveal
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ourselves. we sit in circles, so
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to see the faces
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of our friends, and yet,
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at times, the face is drained,
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turned inward
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into space and time: we make a face
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to hide it.
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my father's form was rocking
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in the chair.
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he was so thin and light
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the chair
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would barely move,
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his eyes would rock, and I
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would find that I was rocking too,
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our friend
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who finds it hard to eat
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was rocking also
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on the phone last night;
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his face is turned to distance
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we can't enter
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though we try
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to form a web
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or matrix.
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The night before
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that call: our friends were here.
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we talked of all the work we'd done,
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and other things.
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It was no more than this:
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we spent a simple night together.
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I've been
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only speaking for myself.
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25.
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Whatever goes on with us is extendable:
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the rights of man
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and not as the crow flies.
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the gull's body in air
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fluctuates. the state of The Nation
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is measured in The Nation's garbage.
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my brother talks of the City
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as if he'd been there:
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men on the lookout for money only
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Depraved Seat of Power.
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a man in Detroit
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vacuums the City's sewers: diamonds
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false teeth, a string of pearls
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identification
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bracelet of fence
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where the crows sit.
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at the end of sight
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the gull's body
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floats on a solid object
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which is the air
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my brother taks of the cities he's been to
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I kiss your legs & knees in the City
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whatever goes on with us is extendable
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my brother talks of a fictional city,
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without you.
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35. _(the dead)_
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The nearness of you
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tho you've gone to work
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and I'm alone in these four rooms
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is evidenced
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in your blouse lying across the chair
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the placement of ashtrays & books, even
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the flat cool breeze sliding
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under the half-cracked window
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at my side.
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outside
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snow general all over the terrace
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in its drifts, the brick
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wall around it and the metal railing
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snow capped . Paul's
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too real picture & yours
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where my eyes go
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to the wall.
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nearness
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of friends dead and friends
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gone to work
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in your new dress
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and boots (old boots
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in the closet
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a pair
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left in our house on the Cape
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where the snow also is general
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poles marking the land
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standing in drifts.
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reluctant to start
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a movement in real time,
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fixed line
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of a row of trees, a man
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stands in them as vector
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as gesture of open
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coat, wind down boulevards
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a row of low buildings
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passed on a Triumph
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in West Los Angeles
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Pasadena . Annie
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sleeping together
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waking
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together, in boredom, in real time.
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the mind goes in its junk
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to the wall: camera
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and man standing
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under a snow bridge
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in the middle of gesture,
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his nearness
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It is not himself. not
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that a camera lies;
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the eyes
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go to the wall --
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was of stone & blank face
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Sara
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holding the rope, Paul
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hanging below
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both
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watching the camera
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goofing. hat
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cocked on his head
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blind light in his glasses. serious
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Sara.
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the mind throws out junk
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objects
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gather in their places
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ash trays & books, your blouse
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the nearness of you.
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my mind's
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junk is a history of women
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in pictures
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all those things done wrongly.
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we live wrongly. but
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that we live _in_ these things,
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go to the wall --
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was of stone
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like a carved placque
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of the war dead, hand holes
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of the names in the letters
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grave stone
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worn in the weather
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sight extension of my father's life
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standing
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in his body in the general snow.
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he is 59 now.
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_click_.
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How then to extract myself
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from these dead
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"How rare, the move to center
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where we live":
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the nearness of you
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to be home free of the mind's junk
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is a history of bondage
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pictures
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of women loved wrongly
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and men.
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Go to the wall then
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there is nothing there
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but flagellant
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but stone's message to stone
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vague scent of bodies in bed or on fire
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impossible elegance flesh has
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retreating from muscle and bone.
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a short distance
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so much bulk
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a bundle of sticks
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the loved corpse
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technician.
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*
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the chair sits in the room's center
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it is free of the wall
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around it
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are fixed objects: books
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and the made bed,
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a shell on the table beside it
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In each case the agreement
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was contractual, "you
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stay, I'll go"
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Sun
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makes the chair beautiful
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sunlight enters the shell
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all these things are particular
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it is a lovely chair. the shell
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is made ridiculous by the light
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It is ourselves we love.
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*
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I want constancy
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I want to live on in the face of death
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in the face of those dead
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I want my father
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I want my fingers
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gathered in the letters on the stone
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Want your body, your objects
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this fixed roof.
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the wall before me
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is empty
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beside these closed frames of photographs
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Isolate
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Faces of times that are dead now
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(you were a child then
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outside
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snow constant in drifts in the starlight
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the nearness of you: Home
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ceases to vibrate
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It's not the pale moon that excites me
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you return
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as the same one
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who left me.
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---------------------------------------------------
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---------------------------------------------------
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HOME was published by Membrane Press, now
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Light and Dust Books. Light and Dust Books
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are available from the Grist On-Line Bookstore.
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Copyright (C) 1976 by Toby Olson.
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---------------------------------------------------
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---------------------------------------------------
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