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Ursula Vaughan Williams

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Fast Bind - Fast Find

Each time the scar is shown the wound recedes,
the pain more blunted and the fear grown stale,
neither is conjured by a story’s needs,
tissue and skin have closed and clothed to heal.
Colour of time, shock, courage, panic cease
as speech acknowledges a full release.

And pictures blur a face in all its moods,
they cannot smile to meet the living eye
nor change to answer thoughts or tears or words,
exact, or in interpreting, they lie.
For sight was matched with moment and each sense
took part to shape the seen’s full consequence.

So truth is changed each time the past is told,
diminishing as years draw out in length,
a different shimmer lights the unchanging gold.
So hide the scars if you would keep pain’s strength,
and never look at pictures of the dead
and never say again what’s once been said.

 

Page(s) 30

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