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This poem is taken from PN Review 235, Volume 43 Number 5, May - June 2017.

Magnetic Water Tom Raworth


MAGNETIC WATER

Tom Raworth

glare burns of nothing very near in time
surfaces split and go their own ways
in the breeze of light       so too this image
lengthens nothing       i praise your light
against the night whose skin
glistens with moving cloudy white

those burns were of themselves the image
as was the breeze     one surface was of film
the character half drawn        one coloured
the night air bright with nothing but reflection

then from my death i felt that all must die
that holding in our time was black
and cold      that rocks glowed red
that trees which formerly i climbed
...


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