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These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis. |
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They grew their toes and fingers well enough, |
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Their little foreheads bulged with concentration. |
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If they missed out on walking about like people |
5 |
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love. |
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O I cannot explain what happened to them! |
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They are proper in shape and number and every part. |
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They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid! |
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They smile and smile and smile at me. |
10 |
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start. |
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They are not pigs, they are not even fish, |
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Though they have a piggy and a fishy air -- |
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It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they
were. |
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But they are dead, and their mother near dead with
distraction, |
15 |
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her. |
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