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The Names of the Rose

Or, What the Word Said


ISSUE:  Spring 1959

So stated, so it is, yet isn’t so:
Children’s wisdom, plausible, inane;
I was first to let you know you know.

Do you never smell me when the snow
Mounds the bushes and lies along each cane?
So stated, so it is, yet isn’t so.

When damp Creation waited in a row,
I was whispering in Adam’s brain:
I was first to let you know you know.

And I am, last, all you will have to show:
A line engraved beneath a lichen stain.
So stated, so it is, yet isn’t so.

I walk beside you where the whirlwinds blow,
That you may tell the slayer from the slain:
I was first to let you know you know.

The gift ambiguous that I bestow
Is but a hand-me-down from Jubal-Cain:
So stated, so it is, yet isn’t so;
I was first to let you know you know.

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