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Gregory Orr

To Long

How beautiful they were,
Adam thought—
These beasts and birds;
These tall grasses
And flowering trees.
 
And yet, how full
The universe—
As if there were no room
For words he ached to say.
 
Shouted aloud, they
Might displace
The very things
He wished to celebrate.
 
Therefore, he sang
A dense and wordless song
That filled the only
Emptiness he knew:
 
Inside him,
Near his heart
Where a rib had been removed.

#AmericanWriters

Other works by Gregory Orr...
To Noun

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Departure

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Beggar’s Song

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The River

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Two Lines from the Brothers Grimm

Now we must get up quickly, dress ourselves, and run away. Because it surrounds us, because they are coming with wolves on lea… because I stood just now at the wi…
Then

My parents and the parents of others were pillars of meat the sky’s blue roof rested on. Around them grew flowers with stalks so thin they bent
To Say/To Save

Eve sensed this Was something Words could do In a fallen world: Move a thing’s
Gathering the Bones Together

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To Notice

In Eden, Adam Had been so busy Making up smug Nouns of dominion, He hadn’t watched
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Self-Portrait at Twenty

I stood inside myself like a dead tree or a tower. I pulled the rope of braided hair and high above me
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God wanted labels That would stick To fur or bark or leaf. Hadn’t he given Adam A tongue?
Trauma (Storm)

Hunkered down, nerve-numb, in the carnal hut, the cave of self, while outside a storm rages.



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