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What Poems Are For They aren't for everything. I better swallow this, or else wind up shut up by openness so utter. Nip and tuck, poems are for a bit, a patch, a mended hem, carnation's cage—and then the heart may bloom, the sex may roar, the moment widen to be the well the child fell in forever—yes—but not until I've checked the pinafore and laced the meat, puttied the stones, and pinched the flowers back. I can't give you a word to hold the dead. I can't give you a name to hold a god, a big enough denomination. Find yourself a church instead, where roofs are all allusions to the sky, and words are all incorrigible. Timelessness, and time, they are not mine to give. I have a spoon, a bed, a pen, a hat. The poem is for something, and the world is small. I'll give you that. 179 ...

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