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Flatlands

Horses and geese in a sodden field.
Solitaries with luggage on a wet platform.
Postage-stamp house on a bit of land,
a copse, a fold, a quadrant of wood,
lines of beech, lines of poplar,
miniature commentary magnified
in the glass, winter streaking the window,
the train bearing, not bearing the weight
within. Let this not be thought
(one thought to oneself), non-
thoughts of passengers on the way forward
backward through the hour.

 


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

Saskia Hamilton is the author of As for Dream (2001), Divide These (2005), Canal (2005), and Corridor (forthcoming 2014). She is also the editor of The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005) and co-editor of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2008). She teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University.



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