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This poem is taken from PN Review 187, Volume 35 Number 5, May - June 2009.

Paragraphs Marilyn Hacker

Paragraph
Another morning opens up its hand
on loss and possibility at once.
Your face is wrinkled. The blank page is lined.
A year turned over in its furrows; months
narrowed the light, which now has widened
three weeks past solstice, lengthening beyond
the cloudbank or the elegy,
the unlucky anniversary.
The father who outlived his daughter writes
something about the snow
which covered the cow pasture in last night’s
sub-zero freeze. The four-New-Years’-ago
manuscript’s a book - cold as a monument, the daughter
who outlived her father thinks. Outside her study window
blackbirds preen on iridescent water.
...


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