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Oldlce The thought that you could even save the light, that you could stop it from having to be everywhere at once. You stood in the ice cream shop and from the street, in a group of silly glass trumpets light came, and broke into millions of itself, shattered from the pressure of being mute who knows how long. There also, leaning against the counter the child who saw nothing but the bins of sweet color separately rimmed with silver. Behind you, thoughtfully placed by the owners, a photo of an avalanche, its violence locked in blue spears . . . The ice moved cruelly, one way only, and behind the avalanche,and behind die posts that held it, die cars went back and forth like mediators. You who do not exist: you stared along the edges of the freezer: frost glistened and clustered. Suddenly it looked as if one act could be completed, mounting over and over, even under terrible pressure. Perhaps the tiny crystals would last forever. Once it seemed the function of poetry was to redeem our lives. But it was not. It was to become indistinguishable from them. 5 ...

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