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This poem is taken from PN Review 167, Volume 32 Number 3, January - February 2006.

Five Poems Elaine Feinstein


Immortality

If I believed in an old-fashioned paradise,
then you, my love, would still be talking in it.
There would be blue sky and a few clouds
seen through stone arches, as in
Raphael's 'School of Athens',with Diogenes
sprawled on the steps, and Plato in the likeness of da Vinci.
You could pursue them with your eager questions -
as you once challenged speakers at LSE.

It's not that I hope to find you there
myself, more that I cannot bear
it should be true as once you said:
We think. And learn to understand a bit.
And then we're dead...


Skin

There was a time before we met as well
as this inexorable after . If I had not
...


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