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This poem is taken from PN Review 81, Volume 18 Number 1, September - October 1991.

The Sirens: Rite of Passage Francis Berry

What Song the Syrens sang … though
Puzling. … not beyond all conjecture.
Urne-Burial, ch.V.


I know them singing in me still
As a summer day is closing or in the wail
Issuing from poles or wires, or in the draughts Humming London corridors, Sirens,
Yet compared to their original chants
In the naked - and ourselves unshirted - shine
Of the Tyrrhene Sun
Saucy and gay.

'Safely enjoy
Their Song', Circe had said. What a lie!
Unless'enjoy' is to possess: a possession
Of those vibrations of their original strain
Accompanying the decline of each Sun
Since.
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