This is wonderful Stephen!
-Peter Ciccariello
On 10/10/06, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> Michael before Stephen before David
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> Chris the afterthought. Brothers kept separate
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> The salt in Tebtunis about the mummyıs mouth
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> The Civil Service circa 242 BC stuffed
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> Into the belly of the once crocodile. An homage
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> To the god (Crocodile). The Civil Service
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> Taped shut its own papyri. The proper burial
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> Of proper verdicts. Who lost, who regained
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> Such and such property. Who made the suit
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> And who paid the fine. Unrolled, the crocodile god
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> Spoke, still speaks through the lips of the judges:
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> The bookkeepers own no genders
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> The Pacific breaks up. Those waves go flat
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> Under the basalt bluff. He climbs under with his camera:
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> An acknowledgement of curves, the disturbance
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> In the lava, the salt in the enduring crust:
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> The Civil Service rarely pleasures the curve
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> Nor the sad divisions, even a death
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> Among the brothers. I am here where
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> The Columbia bends wide into the Pacific.
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> Awe struck, Lewis and Clark did not live long enough
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> To fathom loggers, mills, those shredded forests
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> The long saw, truck, track and flatcar
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> Decade by decade into this moment:
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> Those brothers - the fallen - one by one, after them.
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> Stephen Vincent
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