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Jack Gilbert
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Jack Gilbert was born in Pittsburgh in 1925 and is the author of Views of Jeopardy, the 1962 winner of the Yale Younger Poets Series, Monolithos, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, The Great Fires (Knopf, 1996), and Refusing Heaven (Knopf), winner of the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. His new collection of poems, The Dance Most of All (Knopf), will be published in April, 2009.
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Perfected
In the outskirts of the town
the street-sweeper puts down
his broom of faggots and angrily
begins to shake the young ginkgo.
The leaves fall faster.
He shakes it even harder
and the leaves fall by ones and twos.
He rests to calm himself.
A passing boy speeds up
and leaps in the air,
slamming the trunk with both feet.
The yellow leaves spurt out.
The three of them stand looking up.
One leaf falls, then more.
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| © 2008 The Cortland Review |
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