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  • From "Reading Chuang Tzu in Seoul"
  • Barry Hill (bio)

Away, after the back gave way

The true men of oldSlept without dreams…True men breathe from their heels.

Days grounded here.I try to walk and the bladeSlices around a disc.

I feel like Ting the CookWhose knife workHas gone wrong.

The Tao a long way off.My wife also—A hemisphere away.

She knows my plight andI'll Skype her no moreFrom this buzzy Writer's Centre.

I must stay on, get upGet out and read more poems.She gets that, she's got gigs herself

And won't be homeIf I get back, she'll beIn a rainforest somewhere [End Page 110]

Unmedicated and clearFree of pain, singing withThat voice of Absolute Roaming

Making All Things EqualIn a cosmos of notesUnfurling in her hair.

That won't be all bad. CouldEven be for the good—Like sleeping alone

Or living without a will. [End Page 111]

Barry Hill

Barry Hill is a poet and historian. His recent nonfiction books include Peacemongers (2014), a study of Rabindranath Tagore, and a collection of essays, Reason and Lovelessness (2017); recent poetry collections include Grass Hut Work (2016) and Naked Clay: Drawing from Lucian Freud (2012), which was short-listed for the UK's 2013 Forward Prize. A former poetry editor of the Australian, he lives by the sea at Queenscliff, south of Melbourne.

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