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Jane Duran

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Three poems from a new sequence, Graceline

The Room and the Road

River I cannot swim from
        rinses those reeds, the whistling 
                high moments of reeds

so I can understand what it is to travel, 
        endure, slip lightly 
                from one country to another

as if I were pulling off shirts, 
        like the approach to the beige 
                and pink church in Andacollo

after struggling for days through cactus land, 
        a church that is all light, 
                no shadow sees it yet;

then I enter the crypt 
        and I can just make out 
                jewels, badges, crutches

left behind to thank the Virgin 
        for saving a life, for making good; 
                so quiet and unexceptional

must this reverie be at first, 
        this casting off 
                of all I own –

even the sturdiest ground, 
        where a tree shakes itself free in the rain 
                and the room knows.

Jane Duran’s collection, Breathe Now, Breathe (Enitharmon 1995) received the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Enitharmon published Silences from the Spanish Civil War in 2002, and Coastal, a PBS Recommendation, in 2005.

Coastal is reviewed on page 71.

Page(s) 33

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