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This poem is taken from PN Review 131, Volume 26 Number 3, January - February 2000.

Six Poems Isobel Jeffares

Fall

Fall in love with the jagged stone,
The broken path, the shaft of bone,
The wind-cut hill or the cold sea's moan,
Not with his voice on the telephone.

Fall in love with the empty snare,
The echoing room, the riven pair,
The shivered pane or the unlit stair,
Not with the way that someone cut his hair.

Fall in love with the skeleton leaf,
The perished seed, the patient grief,
The wasted milk or the lost belief
But not with the apparition of his heart
Because there's nothing there. Don't even start.


Look

She's always on the make.
It really makes you sick.

I kissed her on the cheek
And played it by the book
...


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