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    Abridgement 

     

    by Alix Anne Shaw

     

     

    Beneath the ground, the garden dies

    back along itself, back toward itself.

    The lichen is a handprint

     

    hunkered down to stone.

    After long use, language

    gives out, like anything else:

     

    words grow loose in their sockets,

    break when touched. Meaning burns

    in the lodestone, the toad’s alchemical eye;

     

    written as a glyph I’ll never read.

    It hurts me, as the frost 

    scorches the silver stem

     

    of the milkweed, and the garden is unmade.

    Now the days themselves recede

    from dawn to dawn. The heart’s slow motor

     

    stills. Even the stones retract their moss.

    Everything that lives

    lives in retreat.

     

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