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  • Writer's pictureCarrie Etter

W.S. Graham's Implements in Their Places (Faber, 1977), 2 of 2


Here's a second run of favourite passages from this splendid book:

Do not intrude too much

Into the message you carry....

from 'Johann Joachim Quantz's Five Lessons'

So she was seen to enter

The wood with her young skirt

Flashing.

from 'The Lost Miss Conn'

To set the scene. The night

Wind is rushing the moon

Across the winter road.

A mile away a farm

Blinks its only eye.

from 'The Murdered Drinker'

Up over the wood's roof I imagine

The long sigh of Outside goes.

from 'The Secret Name'

Because I could not gracefully

Get out of what I was doing, I made

An inner task come to fruit

Invisible to all spectators.

*

Dammit these words are making faces

At me again. I hope the faces

They make at you have more love.

from 'Implements in Their Places'

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