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50 The Fly The fly knows when I give up waiting for him to land and go back to my book. Then when I am in the middle of a stanza or line he returns, and just before I am again aware of his air-brake touch, he has bitten me; I am jerked from the poem and the poem’s world, on the verge of transformation. Miserable life, a fly’s. What is the point of fracturing and repeating the world into a thousand images— those bulbous, hairy, coppery eyes? Little suckers for feet, veined, cellophane wings. . . . Flesh-fly, sly fly, vector of malaria, dengue, yellow fever: Come back. I am sweet, I have killed no one. ...

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