DEFENDER'S RAP

• A queer thing about those waters: there are no
• Birds there, or hardly any.
• I did not miss them, I do not remember
• Missing them, or thinking it uncanny.
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• The beach so-called was a blinding splinter of limestone,
• A quarry outraged by hulls.
• We took pleasure in that: the emptiness, the hardness
• Of the light, the silence, and the water’s stillness.
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• But this was the setting for one of our murderous scenes.
• This hurt, and goes on hurting:
• The venomous soft jelly, the undersides.
• We could stand the world if it were hard all over.