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This poem is taken from PN Review 22, Volume 8 Number 2, November - December 1981.

Two Poems Thom Gunn

JUNE

In these two separate rooms we sit,
I at my work, you at yours,
am at once buried in it
And sensible of all outdoors.

The month is cool, as if on guard,
High fog holds back the sky for days,
But in their sullen patch of yard
The oriental poppies blaze.

Separate in the same weather
The parcelled buds crack pink and red,
And rise from different plants together
To shed their bud-sheaths on the bed,

And stretch their crumpled petals free,
That nurse the box of hardening seed,
In the same hour, as if to agree
On what could not have been agreed.
...


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