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Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
the reader asked. In the whirling world,
in the simultaneous submission of winter to desolation
& summer to its surfeit of light they labor, days, nights
bent at tables Laplandic, Somalian, Upper Voltan, Czech,
a hundred thousand poets at any named moment,
stupid with vowels, joyful with vowels, whispering
Now fly, good words--answer the man--unfurl those yellow wings.
Go--stand in the branches outside my filthy window.
Sing, goddamn you! Sing!



Gerald Fleming
Contents | Mudlark No. 3
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