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This poem is taken from PN Review 161, Volume 31 Number 3, January - February 2005.

Five Poems Sheenagh Pugh

The Movement of Bodies

He fractured white light into seven colours,
reckoned the distance to the moon,

wrote laws for the movement
of bodies: no mystery to him

until now. Planets in their orbit,
the sea's tides, his eyes

locked to the lit face
of the young mathematician.

A body at rest remains so
unless some force act on it.

So many years, no joy
but in numbers, no troubling

of the flesh. The pink tongue-tip
idly licking a finger

constricts his heart. His edges
...


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