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This poem is taken from PN Review 128, Volume 25 Number 6, July - August 1999.

Two Poems Peter Dale

Pact

Name that I have called upon more times
than any name of God's,
such whispers, blame, so many cries -
hardly murmuring you said:
Some people vow and others vowel.
Blessed are the dead.
- You pleaded with the block I was:
Time. It is time.
Together. Come with me now.
- And inchingly I came.

Look back.
Where is the way we took?
It could end here.
It can't be: come with me.
Not any more.
There is this way,
no other.
Staying is fear;
each step is terror.

Leave me alone.
Break all the words we swore.
...


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