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4. Now all the Sciences of History are at the door Or tent-flap, fly-screen, wire-entanglement And peer in. Still on their jotters there’s little spilt Or spattered, and still they will reiterate: ‘Time must be History, and History an Idea Patient of its uncoiling To an End. Otherwise we fall through, Like light through glass, nothing now and nothing then.’ Boys on their cots think they hear water And the clink of tin: in their dreams of whiskers They will soon be shaved. Wounds get stuck with cat Or blanket-hair. What must happen, what need not? JEFFREY WAINWRIGHT | 12
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Crockery Antiquarium He chomps their squirming comrades one in either hand, but Ulysses gets the Cyclops drunk, lops and sharpens a mighty pine, has four men lift it and in lock-step drive it . . . but this is a story you know well enough, like Ulysses clinging to the ram’s belly-fleece, his toes cinched on the creature’s balls and seeming to wink as he slips by the monster’s blinded hands. But why would anyone want these scenes on a water jar? Perhaps it’s meant to show monstrosity worsted by human nous, gross voracity outwitted by such as cherish table-ware, cups and plates, things to hold our water, light and wine, an arm of the technic that helps us weaklings on our way. All of it will break in time but it will not rot. Thus a patient girl with a brush and glue can find us as we were and – we can come this far – weep for Polyphemus and his bleeding eye. 13 | WHAT MUST HAPPEN

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4.

Now all the Sciences of History are at the door Or tent-flap, fly-screen, wire-entanglement And peer in. Still on their jotters there’s little spilt Or spattered, and still they will reiterate:

‘Time must be History, and History an Idea Patient of its uncoiling To an End. Otherwise we fall through, Like light through glass, nothing now and nothing then.’

Boys on their cots think they hear water And the clink of tin: in their dreams of whiskers They will soon be shaved. Wounds get stuck with cat Or blanket-hair. What must happen, what need not?

JEFFREY WAINWRIGHT | 12

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