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This poem is taken from PN Review 4, Volume 4 Number 4, July - September 1978.

Three Poems Charles Tomlinson

TREE

I took a tree for a guide-I mean
 Gazing sideways, I had chosen idly
Over walls, fields and other trees,
This single elm, or it had chosen me:
 At all events, it so held my mind,
I did not stop to admire as otherwise I should
 The charlock all in yellow fire against
A sky of thunder-grey: I walked on,
 Taking my bearings from that trunk
And, as I moved, the tree moved too
 Alongside, or it seemed to do. Seemed?
Incontrovertibly the intervening hedgerows occupied
 Their proper place, a mid-ground
In a bounded scene, myopically vague
 At each extremity. But the elm
Paced as if parallel for half a mile
...


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