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THERE IS ONLY THIS AND THAT
By Quentin Smith
Organ music rains from the radio
A man’s voice comes out of the wall,
The gray film is unreeling in the window,
Over the black hole blinds are drawn,
A lamp without a shade burns on the ceiling,
A hand writes lines on the sheets of paper;
Over the roof the day runs on and on
This is all that is manifest,
There is no hidden meaning;
Not even the hallucinations incarnated
In Bach’s ancient, pure orisons,
Nor the beautiful images of justified evils
Made necessary by the sepulchrals of a dream.
First stanza written in 1974; second verse in 2002
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