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This poem is taken from PN Review 100, Volume 21 Number 2, November - December 1994.

Five Poems Thomas Kinsella

Chrysalides
Our last free summer we mooned about at odd hours
Pedalling slowly through country towns, stopping to eat
Chocolate and fruit, tracing our vagaries on the map.

At night we watched in the barn, to the lurch of melodeon
  music,
The crunching boots of countrymen - huge and weightless
As their shadows - twirling and leaping over the yellow
  concrete.

Sleeping too little or too much, we awoke at noon
And were received with womanly mockery into the kitchen,
Like calves poking our faces in with enormous hunger.

Daily we strapped our saddlebags and went to experience
A tolerance we shall never know again, confusing
For the last time, for example, the licit and the familiar.
...


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