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This poem is taken from Poetry Nation 6 Number 6, 1976.

Fast Bind - Fast Find Ursula Vaughan Williams

Each time the scar is shown the wound recedes,
the pain more blunted and the fear grown stale,
neither is conjured by a story's needs,
tissue and skin have closed and clothed to heal.
Colour of time, shock, courage, panic cease
as speech acknowledges a full release.

And pictures blur a face in all its moods,
they cannot smile to meet the living eye
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