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RYE
For
the moment the thin tea and the floury scones
until
the rain pulls off, then we’ll expend
the
rest of our ambition on the town,
digest
the streets down to their cobbled spines,
nibble
the scallops on the rectory styles
and
top off with the evening’s salad air.
And
there’s a woman tidying our wrack
both
in the tea rooms and the town we leave,
her
starched white figure raking industriously
the
paper napkins and the dusk of streets,
nursing
the debris of our appetites:
the
mummy who forgives us our small greed.
Alan
Marshfield
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