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8
watching the shorebirds that winter here
... the limits and the lack
Set in their fi nished features.
-- w.h. auden
They are exactly
as intelligent as
they need to be, to
be what they are: having
limits, but no lack,
in their physical
perfection, each is, in
each detail, on close
inspection a wonder and
matter-of-fact. Clear-
ly clearly clearly cry
some curlews fl ying by
us assorted humans here.
back in 1946­47
We'd turn fi rst to those poems by him,
when the new issue came out, though knowing
they would just be studies of fl owers --
brief, accurate, vivid -- diff erent
individual fl owers, their shapes, their
positions and balancings on their stems,
small movements special to them, the varying