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Every
year, if I can, I'll walk down
that street, as far as the flat
that was yours.
I'll read the blue plaque
on the wall, telling how long
you lived there, how long you were happy
to have no more of the world
than this.
And then I'll walk on
a little way, to the bench
they have named for you.
It looks over
the harbour mouth, where the ships
come and go, where Franklin sailed out
into myth, where the men from the north
first entered this place and possessed it
by naming it.
Here where you sat
and watched the whole world, living
and dead, come in on the tide.
© Sheenagh
Pugh
originally
published in Acumen
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