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FACING AFRICA These are stone jetties, And, in the close part of the night, Connected to my feet by long Warm, dangling shadows On the buttressed water, Boats are at rest. Beyond, the harbor mouth opens Much as you might believe A human mouth would open To say that all things are a darkness. I sit believing this As the boats beneath me dissolve And shake with a haunted effort To come into being again, And my son nods at my side, Looking out also Into dark, through the painted Living shadows of dead-still hulls Toward where we imagine Africa To bloom late at night Like a lamp of sand held up, A top-heavy hourglass, perhaps, With its heaped, eternal grains Falling, falling Into the lower, green part Which gives off quick, leafy flashes Like glimpses of lightning. We strain to encounter that image Halfway from its shore to ours: To understand The undermined glowing of sand Lifted at midnight Somewhere far out above water, Drowning With Others 103 The effortless flicker of trees Where a rumor of beasts moves slowly Like wave upon wave. What life have we entered by this? Here, where our bodies are, With a green and gold light on his face, My staring child's hand is in mine, And in the stone Fear like a dancing of peoples. 104 ...

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