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The Child's Swing

The chld's swing still hangs from the greying limb of the autumned elm,
Its ropes passively rotting, and its seat,
One side detached, suggests an attaché-case
In the limp fingers of a doped business-man in a back-street.

Nobody comes with a ladder sentimentally
To take the chld's swing down, to be hung in the museum of Memory.
Suburban cattle will eventually plant it in the clay of creation
With the haw and the sloe and the junk from the Omnibus Station.

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