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>But this issue seems to go beyond your typical existential awareness of >mortality. If the poem has some kind of eternity to it, I can bear it, I >think. But not that the poem as good as *never existed*. Eternity's only relative, eh? I mean, immortality in poetry terms means still reading Sappho, which is less than an eyeblink in those geological or astronomical terms. And doesn't Spinoza formulate the eternal in terms of a kind of absolute present? Mind you, what you're describing is often what it feels like to be a poet in Australia... Best Alison