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This poem is taken from PN Review 248, Volume 45 Number 6, July - August 2019.

Three Poems Nell Prince
Diving into the Wreck

You can’t translate its planks
                                          or say
exactly what its split mast means.

Only, say only its rigging’s green,
its deck a carpet squirming weeds,

lisp grasses, fish unseen.
                                There too,
a whisper buffeted,

                    a coffer buried,

embroiled in sand and ancient
tynne – spoils scattered on soft

rock surfaces. It’s true, too, this ship

was Flanders-bound, and held old
stores of muscadel and metheglin.

But any further, and the further
we go in, its shape recedes, lies
...


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