Peninsula

The grasses hereabouts
are the grasses of Long Island,
the wheat-coloured grasses of a junkyard.

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I prefer the short to the long,
the minor to the major. Bartleby to Moby-Dick,
A Portrait of the Artist to Ulysses.
I even prefer the fascinating programme booklet
to the film festival itself.

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The jumbly dining-room
of the Loong Fong suggests
a steamship's not-quite-kosher saloon,
the brines and greenish fogs of old Shanghai.