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Poetry of Louis Dienes

People in the Mountains

People talk of whisky in the mountains,

People race the eagle’s shadow,

And shoot the peaches off the trees.

 

The angles of their hats are wild,

The timing of their curses shakes the walls of the saloons,

They whisper soft as death when the cricket sound is loud,

And never tell a thing about themselves.

 

When strangers come they disappear into the shadows

And sigh and muse about the sky and dream.

“The People in the Mountains represent the hell-and-gone, loafing and Hamlet spirit of possible persons. They want to play glorious hide-and-seek with the why-should-it-be-there universe.”

—Eli Siegel
From Preface to Personal & Impersonal

From Personal & Impersonal

© 1959 by Terrain Gallery

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