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This poem is taken from PN Review 92, Volume 19 Number 6, July - August 1993.

Poems Simon Howard

THE SADNESSES OF AENEAS

It's morning, early. Dove under-winged by pink,
A fist of troubled cloud away high to the west.
And all of beauty lays along to touch the trees
And make them shiver apprehending it, divides the
   grass
So that the dew makes shining islands of the lawn.

You've spent the night in scanning through a scripted life
That much of you insists has been your own.
Each place you've paused at paused and then,
Both owned and disavowed you.
At instant, appearance fled from you at speed,

Sand sifting down heaped sand banks with the dry
And unexpected, the inexplicable summer winds.
And you would stare into a whitening, a process
   nameable,
...


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