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This poem is taken from PN Review 90, Volume 19 Number 4, March - April 1993.

Living in a Dry Place An Outback sequence Iain Bamforth

1.

This is it at last,
Hesiod's update
on the Work and Days.
Look for a hotel.
Ask for directions even.
He's not listening -
grinding his own axe
and nobody else
beside him, trepanning
the creaky verandah
as a wedge-tail
lifts, hanging out over
space and stillness.
The rest is literature.
After the cool
experiment, read this
back-of-Bourke
...


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