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This poem is taken from PN Review 128, Volume 25 Number 6, July - August 1999.

Three Poems Ra Page

Favourite

'Give me more love, or more disdaine' -
You found the poem whose sentiment
for years I'd struggled to explain;
you, who weren't into verse, who spent
each breathless interim between
my swerves defending moderation.

I bring you storm: Yet when I seize,
in mid tirade, that opening line
you roll your eyes like weighted dice,
like the spun heads of that joke-shop coin
you toss, whose flip-catch-slap reveals
a total tally way off natural -
that no man's land, the unmapped mean.
'Give me more love, or more disdaine.'


Bad Love Songs
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