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Spring Elegy(For Frank Vincent, my student, who died of AIDS March 17, 1997)

By Sherod SantosPosted Thursday, Jan. 8, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET

By Sherod Santos

(posted Wednesday, Jan. 7)

To hear the poet read "Spring Elegy," click here.

All morning in class that hollow feeling of how little
we are left to say; and then, a few hours later,
while I was downstairs checking the afternoon mail,
someone came in and laid out neatly on my office desk
a black-and-white photograph, a sprig of forsythia,
and a tenth share of his ashes in a smoked glass vial.

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Sherod Santos is the author of three books of poetry, most recently The City of Women. A fourth, The Pilot Star Elegies, is forthcoming in fall 1998.
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