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This poem is taken from Poetry Nation 3 Number 3, 1974.

Two Poems Gareth Reeves


CHURCH-WALL

Strands of an organ-voluntary, the lonely
practice of a Saturday, float
from the church, tangling
with traffic and pungent street-smells.

This wall of shining flints has no rules.
Masons, skilled at knapping, once tapped
flints with patient trowels, feeling
for seams, and split them with no effort,
accurately. They reveal
shapes that come as in dreams,
known before, unrecognised till seen.
It is a skill trained and intuitive.

Each irregular stone-face is a rounded
hollow or rounded belly,
and holds in its centre a sun:
...


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