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We came
to the Indians and pointed out
that we were what was happening
and they saw reason and took some gold and went.
We and the trees sat down together
without preconceptions, and the small animals
trooped in to give us their fur.
We gave the land the trains and roads it needed
and dug hard lumps of coal out of its bed.
Why should we feel so lonely we kill each other
in the street we dreamed up? Anyway
we can't think what to do about it now.
Possible make a clean sweep, a new landscape
like a billiard baize. We could build Indians
out of fiberboard with steel swivels at the elbow
and program a beaver to dam a concrete pool
with saplings we would ship in from Japan.
Nobody told us not to. We have all this stuff
left over in lots and lots of time.
--Charles O. Hartman
(published
in Glass Enclosure, Hanover, New
Hampshire: Wesleyan University Press, 1995)
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Now
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by Tom Raworth
Words
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by Mark Pawlak
The
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Some
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The
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Those
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The
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