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This poem is taken from PN Review 11, Volume 6 Number 3, January - February 1980.

Across the Winter C.H. Sisson

1.
Quiet. It is winter and the frost
Stretches away into the mist;
A circle of dark closes in
Under the predicated stars.
How, under them, can you be content
With the light, the fire and the Christmas tree?
Or the gesticulating screen
There by the bottles in the corner?
What spirits move? What memory
Stirs in the human race today?
What in me, for I cannot find
In my drunk and incapable mind
Any entrance. There must be one.
Exit you mean? No, a way in
From this disorderly side of a hill
Which does not matter to me at all.
To what' To what? We must first get in
...


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