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The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems

TOPIARY

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Illustration from The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems

ailing sometimes to understand Why there are folk whose flesh should seem Like carrion puffed with noisome steam, Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it, Fly-blown to the touch of a hand; Why there are men without any legs, Whizzing along on little trollies With long long arms like apes': Failing to see why God the Topiarist Should train and carve and twist Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes: Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind, Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind, Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish.

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