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This poem is taken from PN Review 165, Volume 32 Number 1, September - October 2005.

Five Poems Thomas Kinsella

Legendary Figures, in Old Age

I saw there a number of elders
in intimate companionship,
their old shapes without shame,

playing with one another
- with all that remained
of the barbed shafts of Love.

And I heard one of them saying
to those around her:
'We cannot renew the Gift

but we can drain it to the last drop.'


Lost Cause

And others, grey in feature
and slow-moving, that were condemned
to deal only with the symptoms,

endlessly, never with full effect,
...


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