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This poem is taken from PN Review 231, Volume 43 Number 1, September - October 2016.

Six Poems Bill Manhire
Known unto God

To you, your name also,
Did you think there was nothing but two or three
    pronunciations in the sound of your name?


– Walt Whitman



Boy on horseback,
boy on a bicycle, boy all the way
from Tolaga Bay

blown to bits in a minute.

*

Once I was small bones
in my mother’s body
just taking a nap.
Now my feet can’t find the sap.

*

In Devil’s Wood
I broke my leg and went beneath a tank.
Strange beast! Last thing I heard
was the guns all going, you know,
blankety-blankety-blank.
...


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