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This poem is taken from PN Review 24, Volume 8 Number 4, March - April 1982.

The Mistletoe C.H. Sisson

Rather than speak, I would crawl under a leaf.
Here is the mistletoe growing mysteriously
In the middle of the old apple tree.
What hand put it there? The hand of God?
Lantern of leaves in the lighter leaves of the apple
Continuing in the dark branches of winter,
You hang there luminously, as of a certainty.

Mark how the stem passes into the bark,
The branch, its lithe green of another world
Into the tatty and encrusted bark
And, hang from hang, reaches out into our world
As if the crusted groin were a great womb
From which the parturition was never achieved
But teemed on, monstrous.

This way I can go into the night:
Not returning, for I did not come from there,
...


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