Once there was a vineyard here in green and ordered rows. Now the bleaching grasses bend and nothing fruitful grows except a self-sown lemon tree with leprous, aching boughs, heavy with the bitter fruit come of a daze of flowers. Strange, ugly and unpromising fruit, a crop of warted noses, nothing you present to view […]

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All those heroes high on horseback fill the European squares. Each country’s had its yard of sunshine— now it’s yours and now it’s theirs. Generals, ambitious kings re-drew the logic of their maps— as valets, not much more forgotten, watched them while they took their naps. Geoff Page

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Russian novels are full of people gathering them, while wishing they were in the city. Barbara Fisher

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Only certain cities have it. A street plan may suggest the mood. It’s in the fluency of subways and in the flourish of the food. A string of kings has been and gone with sometimes a caudillo, too, but through it all they’ve always known we’re not the many but the few. Geoff Page

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his arms fold over each other left palm firm against the lower right arm right fingers curve loosely across the biceps golden hairs glisten on tanned skin arms that have dug holes for trees posts fences muscles strengthened against soil wire wood fingers that have guided root tendrils, trickled soil over them, patted the earth […]

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We’ve done it once again, mon Dieu! Yet again we failed to see that we were still in France, alas, and cappuccino had one “p”. The girl who smiled her savoir faire as we enquired “Italiano?” then scorched the milk with quite a flourish would get no work beside the Arno. Ja Ja Si Si […]

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The Difference The difference between men and women is like that between animals and plants. —G.W.F. Hegel Free men are Kings of men and women are their Queens, It’s like poetry and daffodils, like sausages and beans, But, when two ride out together, then there’s one must ride behind, So, though Justice is a woman, […]

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What It Isn’t Old evidences of decay Still linger in the mind And little that you do or say Seems apposite or kind. You preach more often than you pray, You lose more than you find. It isn’t what you take away. It’s what you leave behind. You win so rarely when you play; The […]

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THE DOUBLE The witness Jones attests by affidavit That you were present at the seminar All of the day in question. He asked you for your number and you gave it. He’s quoted from your repartee At lunch and, when you broke at three, He came to collect a pamphlet from your car— And this […]

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The Blessings of Saint Vincent Saint Vincent, patron saint of student clothing, bequeathed to me from the depths and twists of his sorting tables, a perfect Victorian camisole, every stitch scaled in sixteenths of an inch, pin-tucked lawn and pale silk ribbon that threaded the three deep inches of lace to play, across the breasts […]

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