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This poem is taken from PN Review 178, Volume 34 Number 2, November - December 2007.

A Fig of Consequence Rodney Pybus

'I feel here a most grateful relaxation and am become once more a pure quaint crinkle-crankle goth...'
Samuel Palmer, at Tintern Abbey, 1835

Context is all!
                        I admire him for taking
the fig here
         over the Abbey -
                   in a summer-scruffy garden
may be found as much, more, interest
         as in bare-topped ruins: so rejecting
                   the easier gothic shot at the sublime
         he found it in pink hollyhocks
and a high green fig-tree,
                   red tiles, grass and
                             open windows.

              This is a scrupulous little sketch
of our past, in pencil, brown ink and little
                        glances of coloured water
...


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