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Nantes, the Revolution Nantes. Geography, music threaten daily, ecole. Four different seasons, & rabbits & Larks are shy, no sugar birds here to pick insects from furniture, neatly. Buildings dress in uniform, steep slate roofs the same blues & grays as pigeons that settle & scatter hourly from spires where metal flowers swing & bang. Windows close to keep outside out, where I find muskrats, watch their whiskers move & the color of their fur change as it dries. Meetings, loud talk, then not school but siege, the city slams shut, bells are unmounted & melted for cannon, the mouths of waterspouts taken from squares, coffins raised & opened for their lead. That is bad, will bring the dead among us & no one here knows the words to sing or where to pick the cleansing herbs. Guns mark the hours now, raggedly, some so close that when they speak my body rings & I am disconnected, float without hearing my boots hit the stone street where I am fastest among grandfathers & bell-shaped women. My paper boat rides to the current, I race along the bank & find him & fight still as I do for animals but 3 there is nothing to scare, only man-shape in wet clothes, in reeds, it doesn't matter his mouth is full of mud. Old men bury him & he is not the last I find this spring. 4 ...

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