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Dog-days II Incidentally Recalling a Dying Seal
— Not that its old kind give a damn for it. For us who live here, the impersonal Bright quiet gaze of that dying animal Put rightly the relation of the fit And unfit both, to that of which we’re knit. And once the indifference is mutual Shall consciousness here in the individual Turn with the whole? the light of light be lit? I know I saw that seal dying his death Half sunk into the sand, on the sunny shore In the tide-wash: with each wave coming in, The sand sucking him deeper than before, The water swirling over his head again, Subsiding, he catching another breath.
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