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This poem is taken from PN Review 55, Volume 13 Number 5, May - June 1987.

Angel and Caroline Glyn Maxwell

1. We lie in bed with angels at this critical time.

2. And we tell lies in old milky voices unlikely to be believed, but then angels

3. never cease to amaze and solidly, baldly, they believe like girls. Then leap up bare and say they'll make the coffee! Then,

4. they patter away like rain and we shift on a bitter silence, hard and warm as paving.

5. It creeps, it creeps upstairs.

6. Angels are gone: wednesday wakes outside on the landing, a landing that had flown away

7. last night but now thuds, thuds on the side of the room, and Caroline looks in

8. to wash my face and ears and neck in guilt. 'Downstairs, is she? Good. You should be ashamed.' I am.
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