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Steven Taylor

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Glyndwr In London

When Owen studied Law at Westminster
he lived equidistant from the High Road
Kilburn, and the 20th century library
at Swiss Cottage
where there is a seated Sigmund Freud
describing Wales to the rush hour traffic
with his hands in his pockets

and how we feed pigeons from our windows
with a sour expression
and never secure the knot
on our plastic rubbish bags
so that all our smells spill outwards
overnight, onto the pavements
before they can be collected and compressed
into something meaningful and British.

Sigmund surmises perpetually

Owen merely encourages rats
to come up from the railway banking

     and this is unhygienic.

                         Much later, on the Marches
Owen makes the English say sorry
for what they have done
and declares himself a Prince

while Sigmund breaks down our responses
into stale stiff particles of dried bread.

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