• selected poems by Anna Swir

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• I cannot: "I envy you. Every moment / You can leave me. // I cannot / leave myself."
• Happy as a Dog's Tail: "Happy as something unimportant / and free as a thing unimportant. / As something no one prizes / and which does not prize itself. / As something mocked by all / and which mocks at their mockery. / As laughter without serious reason. / As a yell able to outyell itself. / Happy as no matter what, / as any no matter what. // Happy / as a dog’s tail."
• "-- One must hurry / before death comes. For by then / like a dog jerked by its chain / I will have to return / into this stridently suffering body. --"