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Poems

September 1999

Those who stay

by Neil Azevedo

Umberto Boccioni

Inside the strictures of dark green
movement is inclined


to turn and rise away from what precedes,
a world constructed by those who pray


to be something like the bystander,
those in the background thinly assembled,


ció che non siamo, ció che non vogliamo,
we believe we focus


ourselves into less a disarray,
more to how we think we are


when we are not wrong,
when we are what we think we say—


constructed in the color that is not
seen but believed—until we are relieved.


Neil Azevedo is

Neil Azevados poems have appeared in the Raritan, The Paris Review, The Notre Dame Review, among others
more from this author


This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 18 September 1999, on page 36
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