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The Reprimand

If you taste tears too often, inquisitive tongue,
you’ll find they’ve something you’d not reckoned on;
Crept childish out to touch eye’s own phenomenon,
return, into your element.
Tears belong to only eyes; their deepest sorry they wrung from water.
Where wept water’s gone that residue is sorrow, salt and wan,
your bitter enemy, who leaves the face white-strung.

Tears, taster, have a dignity in display,
carry an antidotal gift for drying.
Unsuited to a savoring by the way,
salt puckers tear-drops up, ends crying.
Oh curious, cracked and chapped, now will you say,
Tongue, “Grief’s not mine” and bend yourself to sighing?

Elizabeth Bishop

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Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

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