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MICHAEL SHARKEY
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two poems
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THE NATIONS: 1
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- These people, as we know, admire
music.
- Their composers are required to drink
coffee,
- Chase each other's wives, turn fairy
tales to operas,
- And provide the world with cliches.
- These folk are renowned for spending
all their lives just thinking.
- Once, they worshipped spirits of the
forests.
- Now they keep the trees in line.
- Keep in mind the differences in gender
in their speech:
- The child and house are neuter,
- And the body, like the moon, is always
male.
- Houses, schools and factories have
been built
- So that each detail is historically
correct.
- In the House of Art you will see
things you've only heard of:
- Fat and rabbits, huge carved teddy
bears, dead princesses,
- Attempts to keep the paint inside the
lines by young Americans,
- And photographs of parts of men and
women from the inside looking out.
- The catalogues are beautiful and tell
you how to see.
- Gallery custodians are trained to
know, by glancing,
- Where each visitor is from, and not to
laugh.
- If the town you seek is not depicted
on the latest map
- From ADAC, you can view the open-cut
mine
- On the site where it once stood.
- Language is no hindrance to a good
time.
- If in doubt, attempt to smile.
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THE NATIONS: 3
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- Apology is next to apoplectic in their
word-book,
- Where the language loses weight and
disappears.
- They say 'No problem', as their border
shrinks each year.
- They once had open spaces but it's
privacy they fear.
- These people understand that history's
dead,
- They travel, though there's nothing
left to see:
- They photograph it, show it to their
friends,
- Who wonder how the people live.
- Their time is money, never past. They
worship chance.
- Every time they sing, a man jumps in a
creek and drowns.
- The police inspect the site, but no
one dies where no one lived
- Before the word 'before' was banned.
- In school they learn that learning can
be bought:
- They can't pay too much for the news.
- Nothing has a shape outside their
cities, where the young
- Stay young forever, gaining weight
while words grow thin.
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