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And there will be no
praise for Folly, Erasmus, from these lips,
or from what I use as lips, the tips
of fingers I've let linger without expertise
on a feeling less feeling than desire to tease
what I can, or they may, from a simple rock.
I found it on the spoiled ground I walk,
alongside hop-scotch squares chalked
to dare jumps from steps I give to the bare
concrete. Its smooth brown whisper
hints at lost red, but it hasn't led me to what
formed it: not what gravity of years; not
the great weight of a wait uncounted; not the slow
or sudden forces that freed it. I don't know
any of it. I'm not as foolish as the French
academic I read who studied a people at length,
and their region others had named. He claimed