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This poem is taken from PN Review 43, Volume 11 Number 5, May - June 1985.

Poems Porter Abbott

UNDER THE ROSS ICE SHELF
(Chicago, December)

What business can we have beneath the ice?
The regularity of our motion here
Can not be ours. Caught in these currents, grown old
Out of our depth, what pact, what secret wish
Has drawn us to this density of cold
To move with the quiet certitude of fish?
...


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