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Michael

i.m. Michael Mallin, Agnes Hickey

​

I imagine you walking through the bazaar in Peshawar, 

your fingers skimming bolts of cotton and silk.

Your hands holding cloths of cerise, tangerine

and indigo to the light, offering your face quiet shade.

Or at the Hill Station on the Khyber Pass, 

under a ceiling fan on a veranda,

reading the newspaper by moonlight.

The band playing, violin, mandolin,

music streaming over the Plains.

Men released from the bayonet, 

the snipers' bullet.

 

Here in Strawberry Beds, a breeze sweeps

the river, ruffles the shawl around my shoulders,

–the one you knit for me. 

A shawl of chrysanthemums, 

faggot stitched

together, with old gold silk. 

One stitch for each day we are apart.

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