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This poem is taken from PN Review 150, Volume 29 Number 4, March - April 2003.

Letter to Hermann Broch, December 2001 John Peck

So the new unit ticks over. The persistent, faintly detectable taste of time -
     but shall the wine taste itself?

    Twenty-five years back I rented the rooms you inhabited
     at the start of your USA transitus.
Third-floor New Jersey rooms grace of Lili Kahler, their walls
     pitched inward with the roof.
Your tenancy there evoked only a faint presence, but now
     words to you become possible -
the vulgarity of this fictitious intimacy meant to be overheard
     will have to do, but you got over
your superstitious regard for the seminarians of literature here
     so let us converse anyway:
Horace, vintner bookkeeper, though not in your Teesdorf textile
     factory, shall watch over us.
A family business, ranks of steel spinners, watched over you
     as you fed them substance and thrived
as one of those who make things go in order to go at things
...


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