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This poem is taken from Poetry Nation 5 Number 5, 1975.

Ten Poems C.H. Sisson


ANCHISES

This is my proper order: sightlessness,
The invisible pack hunting the visible air.
There are those who exist, but it is not I.
Existent are: bodies, although their existence is
Not proven; tremors
Through the vast air expecting some other thing
Not known, or hopeless, or else hoped for and lost.
One could devise invisibility,
Walking by it as if it were not obligatory
As it is with me, moi qui n'existe pas
Non sum, therefore non cogito, though there are shapes
Upon a mind I sometimes take to be mine.
This is not much to show for sixty years
Here by the Latin gate, or where the Baltic
Spreads its white arms over the barren sand.
...


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