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Egypt

Cle-
 1600 men to a stone. Please mention
the Nile. Croco-But the slow thing
happens in the air.
Tree slender as light.
Did Cae-? I don't remember
that he came.
I remember the sand.
The limping slaves.
The exact condition
of their death.
The terrible thing somehow happens
in the air.
Night in that Egypt. God! how cold
the stars must have been.

Tree slender as life,
and as tall
- green then! Where are the leaves
of that time? Why can't I think
these stars are the same stars?
Where do the souls of men have their spaces?
Shall I be obedient in that silver nudity?

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(Cape Town, The Matopos, Academia, Pretoria) …

Turner Cassity

Something needs to be done—like dragging a big black plastic sack through the upstairs rooms, emptying into it each waste basket, the trash of three lives for a week or so. I am careful and slow about it, so that this little chore will banish the big ones. But I leave the bag lying on the floor and I go into my daughter’s bedroom, into the north morning light from her windows, and while this minute she is at school counting or spelling a first useful word I sit down on her unmade bed and I look out the windows at nothing for a while, the unmoving buildings—houses and a church—in the cold street. …

Reginald Gibbons

It is the picture of a man who dreams …

James Masao Mitsui

All we ever talk of is light— …

Maggie Smith

Our fire of dead willow-branches lights beyond the tilled …

H. L. Davis

The glossary

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