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PN Review 275
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This poem is taken from PN Review 79, Volume 17 Number 5, May - June 1991.

Presence: Translations from the Natural World Les Murray

EAGLE PAIR

We shell down on the sleeping-branch. All night
the limitless Up digests its meats of light.

The circle-winged Egg then emerging from long pink and
    brown
re-inverts life, and meats move or are still on the Down.

Irritably we unshell, into feathers; we lean open and rise
and magnify this meat, then that, with the eyes of our
    eyes.

Meat is light, it is power and Up, as we free it from load
and our mainstay, the cunningest hunter, is the human
    road

but all the Down is heavy and tangled. Only meat is good
    there
and the rebound heat ribbing up vertical rivers of air.

LAYERS OF PREGNANCY

Under eagle worlds each fixed in place
it is to kangaroo all fragrant space
...


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