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This poem is taken from PN Review 212, Volume 39 Number 6, July - August 2013.

A True-Dream Run James Russell
So what happens to you when you have shot all the tigers
And it's impossible to soothe you with a stronger pain,
When your heart is used up yet you are almost satisfied?
You notice the organic rot, the sag and crack of things
Constructed not with you in mind, as some central burgeon
Of fluid matter punctate with rust and grimy seedlings.
And the food you eat is only food then food for the earth.
I see your descendants, Lucretius, laptopped and hearty.
I see their cycle helmets, their answers for everything.
They have your confidence and breeziness; they have your youth
But they don't have your funny arguments and gift of light.
Well my arguments are funny, but in a different way.
They spring from being matter-sick, right from the sag and crack
I mentioned in line four; and it will seep through my lines like sweat.

Lucretius, you extracted beauty from unbeautiful
Physicalism the doctrine that gives you a good laugh
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