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 On The Disadvantages Of Central Heating by Amy Clampitt 
						cold nights on the farm, a sock-shodstove-warmed flatiron slid under
 the covers, mornings a damascene-
 sealed bizarrerie of fernwork
 decades ago now
 
 waking in northwest London, tea
 brought up steaming, a Peak Frean
 biscuit alongside to be nibbled
 as blue gas leaps up singing
 decades ago now
 
 damp sheets in Dorset, fog-hung
 habitat of bronchitis, of long
 hot soaks in the bathtub, of nothing
 quite drying out till next summer:
 delicious to think of
 
 hassocks pulled in close, toasting-
 forks held to coal-glow, strong-minded
 small boys and big eager sheepdogs
 muscling in on bookish profundities
 now quite forgotten
 
 the farmhouse long sold, old friends
 dead or lost track of, what's salvaged
 is this vivid diminuendo, unfogged
 by mere affect, the perishing residue
 of pure sensation
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