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PN Review 276
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This poem is taken from PN Review 10, Volume 6 Number 2, November - December 1979.

Three Poems W.S. Graham

Are you to tell me where my soul is cast
Or in an alligator or a god.

Or would you like to bring the girls at ransom
Over to have a picnic beside the sweet
Clear water. This is the very day for it.
Bring your apricot over. Tell the girls
The mill is off and to come on over
And we'll all put our toes in the sweet river.

An afternoon by the river with two sisters
Is something special. We shouted Gator Gator
And out came May and Bonnie lifting their skirts
Prancing with mock terror out of the shallows
To lovingly berate us. That was when
I worked in America as a young man.

I am told the river had alligators in it.
May and Bonnie are grown up and dead.
But we had some great fun, didn't we.
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