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PN Review 275
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This poem is taken from PN Review 26, Volume 8 Number 6, July - August 1982.

Poems Séan Rafferty

I.

The bubbles rise in the glass.
When I was young
I thought there could be no end
of the songs to be sung.
Now I grow old
with one tune flat in my head
to be up and out and away:
alive or dead.

*

Over the bright the bare
bright spring bare winter day
moved every living thing
to rivalry and play
I saw three hawks go up
and bear the crown away.
Carry the crown from sight.

Under that emptied sky
dwarfed desirous blind
man has a mind to fly.
In that spiral caught
earth air dominion's king
...


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