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Mark Waldron

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Observe the likeness of a slab of beef

Mark Waldron reading Observe the likeness of a slab of beef 1528.5 KB
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Observe the likeness of a slab of beef

to a neckerchief. The first going down your neck,
the second, slipping round it.

And how dissembling memory
is resemblant of a slice of brie, that reaches pungent puberty;

as sudden curves spill from white clothes
just before we fall

so ravenously on it. And how akin
are the bumptious living and the chastened dead,

sharing as they do these pleasant bones, these teeth
I find in my mouth that I find in my head.

And isn’t strawberry kindred to this girlish hope of mine
and isn’t a small child like a small stone

in a small wood
where the ripe and stinking tramps are making rhymes

from the nasty likenesses of things
and setting up their homes in the wide and winky mind.

Page(s) 47

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