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This poem is taken from PN Review 58, Volume 14 Number 2, November - December 1987.

A Little Illustrated Dictionary Michael Bird

                                  Je sème à tout vent

Admire it all, my seabed fastness here
Inside a vine-green lantern slide; the frames
Rotate then pause.
This is my summer house. Defended by tall yellowed
  doors
High August has come calling until the slenderer
  hours

Colour my book, the desklid's ploughed-up plane
Warm marigold tisane. This afternoon
Through the underwater gloom
Outlandish Nemo's steel whale wallows, probing
Antennae torchbeams. Fixed by the murky cones

Are lace-net swallows, twisted afloat in flight,
Dustily surmising the upper-air-encumbered daylight.
'That boy must learn!'
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