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How can anyone describe a river?
Say that it is old, that it was born yesterday,
that it smells of women's garments, of fish,
of life, of an eternal restlessness that matches
and surpasses the quickest rush of young blood
in the veins of someone coming, golden and soft-haired
in the dawn, over the hill and seeing the river for
the first time, the sun
glinting from the waves and
commerce busying itself atop the eternal mystery
that it long ago determined that it would never understand.
Say all that and you haven't even begun.
In the city, the river is denser
and richer, fuller of castoff life and the leavings of
animals, more pungent, filthier and livelier, in more
of a hurry but also torpid, especially in the summer and the
sun.
Now, in the dark, it is quiet and quick, silver and
black, glistening.
Lovely.
Dangerous.
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