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This poem is taken from PN Review 177, Volume 34 Number 1, September - October 2007.

Accommodation for Owls Will Eaves

The guest houses have shut for the winter.
The last bus out of here (and there are only two a day)
has gone. It's after five. And my new friends, Colin and Joy,
whose offer of a camp bed in an outhouse I've accepted gratefully,
are telling me about their courtship in the games room
of a mental hospital near Leith. Axe-murderers.

If I don't mind. Feel comfortable with the idea.
They fumble for a joke and go quiet.
...


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