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30 THIS PLENTY, THIS NEVER ENOUGH Ravaging your pear tree. Not for hunger nor poverty, but to do wrong, to perish. To want things is a kind of sadness, a sickness— for had I loved the pears I stole— But I did not and would not eat them. You beg me to stay. It is harrowing to watch. A hunger uncontrollable and so close to ruin. No love deserves the death it has, you say. But when I find the fruit in the dumpster behind your apartment, I eat it. 31 There is nothing left, nothing I will not do. It wasn’t a meal, you say, it was my heart. Is it good, friend? It was foul but I loved it. [3.137.178.133] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 13:21 GMT) 32 CHEAPSIDE I hear or think I hear the cry of a people. Not a cry—a chant, a hymn. The howling dog chained up in the yard of an abandoned house. The screaming of a woman being beaten or saved. The cough and spittle of a drunk, many drunks. They have forgotten their names. They lay their heads anywhere. They awake one day on my shoulder and are not relieved. They tear me. My people, my people. I invent a name for them, like whistling, like snapping my fingers. The people stare out at me from the place I had hoped to leave. They say, everybody. They say, all of us. My name for them disappears and comes back to me mutilated. My people, the people, everyone, all of us. ...

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