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This poem is taken from PN Review 27, Volume 9 Number 1, September - October 1982.

Two Poems Ian McMillan

    1.
In the marshy land at the back of the pigeon sheds
an enormous ladder has raised itself overnight.
They say many things about high ladders
in the George on a Friday night as they adjust
their pigeon clocks. It throws a shadow
across the tarmac of the yard to the Catholic School

and I climb it.
Not the ladder
but the shadow.

    2.
The pigeon men flock out of the George door
and stand around me as I crawl.
At the top of the ladder
my hollow head brushes something.
'What has tha found, lad?'
They ask. A wall.
I have found a wall.

    3.
I asked him, I said, what
...


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