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This poem is taken from PN Review 74, Volume 16 Number 6, July - August 1990.

Two Poems Michael Hamburger

Logos, one Word before the world was peopled,
Take back your progeny of words, words, words
Whose babbling intercourse, proliferation
Makes counterworlds, more packed than tube trains are
When offices close, with some not even sure
Of a mere dosshouse bed; and with no Malthus
To warn, far less to legislate, against
Their polymorphous promiscuity.
Oh, and immortal, thanks to tablet, paper,
Translator, necromancer, necrophil
For whom the living are not good enough,
Too mixed, too lax, too ugly or too blank.
In ever-growing graveyards, libraries,
Once more they copulate and grossly breed,
Dead with the dead or living with the dead.
Contain them Logos, curb the lexic mob.
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