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This is called "Poem for
My Twenty-eighth Year."

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Shakespeare makes a big
thing of the number seven

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as being very important
in a man's life.

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When he's seven, when he's
14, and then when he's 21.

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I don't know.

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I wondered about the
fourth seven, about 28.

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28 seems an important
number in a great many ways.

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It seems to me that
I'm reading novels.

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Every novel that I pick
up the main character

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happens to be just my age.

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I forgot who I was reading
about today it was 31,

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but at this time it was
Far from the Madding Crowd

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in the beginning sentence,
where Thomas Hardy describes

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Gabriel Oaks as being 28.

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Just at that age where they've
stopped calling him a young man

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so he said.

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"Poem for My
Twenty-eighth Year."

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The last, the last, the last,
nothing can come through.

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The gate is closed.

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A shaft of sun permitting sight.

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I hear the lark.

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No more nightingale.

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Back in the darkness remember
a girl woman sexual child

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with a mind of light.

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Burrs stick to my
socks in dry October.

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Opens up the mind.

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Leaves not muddled with trees.

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The dead smell
rustling in the frost.

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The dance is not so loud.

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We hear the separate words.

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Past the window each old
branch takes its own direction.

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The moon, low in the
lake through the trees,

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are two moons tangled
together in the branches.

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28 the fourth seven.

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Number of my years.

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Phase of my conception.

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Phases of the moon.

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28 years.

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28 days in the cycle of
pulse caught in the middle.

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Two magnets click together.

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28 nights.

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The moon flower feeds
on its own sad light.

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A girl is sent away with child.

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A poem sticks in my throat.

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Poet and girl in one
phase of the moon.

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