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PN Review 275
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This poem is taken from PN Review 97, Volume 20 Number 5, May - June 1994.

Seven Poems Iain Bamforth

Empty Meeting Places
Picture to yourself your own people humming
the tune of Haydn's spirit-level
on a small green hill with a banyan tree.
There is a light shining on what is taking place
in so many words, between the big white tent
and the tether tautening to the peg.

Picture to yourself your own people wandering
into someone's backyard and laying claim
to the area between the hills and the swimming pools.
Soon someone will be asking what it means
to stand there bespattered by the mud
of a Ford convertible, coveting the virgin daughters.

Picture to yourself your own people turning
westwards for the Jordan view
happening among log-mills and early bungalows.
...


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