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This poem is taken from PN Review 232, Volume 43 Number 2, November - December 2016.

‘The People on the Lawn’ & Other Poems Gerry McGrath
The People on the Lawn

The people on the lawn
Were invisible   weren’t on
First-name terms with the dead

Waved maniacally at passing cars
Said their goodbyes by postal ballot

Nodded at the thinning poet
Made their own darkness

Were uninterested in the light from Liébana
Fished in their youth

Won countless Petrarchan laurels
Woke themselves from piss-poor dreams

Suffered from chronic distraction
Never knew what they’d missed

Owned a blind telescope
Slipped into mythology
...


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