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Poems I'd like to have written
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Return
by
R S Thomas
Taking the next train
to the city, yet always returning
to his place on a bridge
over a river, throbbing
with trout, whose widening
circles are the mandala
for contentment. So will a poet
return to the work laid
on one side and abandoned
for the voices summoning him
to the wrong tasks. Art
is not life. It is not the river
carrying us away, but the motionless
image of itself on a fast-
running surface with which life
tries constantly to keep up.
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