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‘Issues
from the hand of God, the simple soul’
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To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
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To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
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Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
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Rising or failing, grasping at kisses and toys,
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Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
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Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
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Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
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In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
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Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea;
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Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor
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And running stags around a silver tray;
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Confounds the actual and the fanciful,
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Content with playing-cards and kings and queens,
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What the fairies do and what the servants say.
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The heavy burden of the growing soul
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Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
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Week by week, offends and perplexes more
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With the imperatives of ‘is
and seems’
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And may and may not, desire and control.
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The pain of living and the drug of dreams
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Curl up the small soul in the window seat
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Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
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Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
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Unable to fare forward or retreat,
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Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
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Denying the importunity of the blood,
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Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
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Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
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Living first in the silence after the viaticum.
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Pray for
Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,
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For Boudin, blown to pieces,
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For this one who made a great fortune,
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And that one who went his own way.
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Pray for Floret, by the boarhound slain between the yew trees,
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Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.