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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.

Four Poems Peter Bland

Gone

Increasingly the past insists
it's more mysterious than what's left
(with clouds asleep on some childhood pond
and summer rooted to the spot).
But what of that child himself, the boy
who roamed those former fields?
Glance back and he slips out of reach.
(Each scene has grown'a life of its own',
ignoring the one who gave it breath,)

Or perhaps that child is simply hiding?
Slowly counting to a hundred until
I cry out'Coming I'and start running backwards -
as darkness thickens -to where it all began,
back beyond the first bird singing,
the first light, back beyond that.
Perhaps then he'll join me, past recalling,
...


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