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This poem is taken from PN Review 116, Volume 23 Number 6, July - August 1997.

Tom Thumb R.F. Langley

>We should accept the obvious facts of physics.
The world is made entirely of particles in
fields of force. Of course. Tell it to Jack. Except it
doesn't seem to be enough tonight. Not because
he's had his supper and the upper regions are
cerulean, as they have been each evening
since the rain. Nor just because it's nine pm and
this is when, each evening since we came, the fifty
swifts, as passionately excited as any
particles in a forcefield, are about to end
their vesper flight by escalating with thin shrieks
to such a height that my poor sight won't see them go.
Though I imagine instantly what it might be
to separate and, sleeping, drift so far beyond
discovery that any flicker which is left
...


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