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so she took a seat and calmed down
beneath Jesus’s crown, combed herself for the first time,
so hard his blood pierced her skin
and she saw seventy new colors on an acacia leaf
ten new shapes in a bread crumb’s form
and, for the first time, harlots, homeless and poor.
Frantically at night she tried to save the prostitutes
around Victoria Station;
forty years straight she kept a daily diary on love
while Ruskin, that portraitist, idle,
handsome as King Cyrus,
hung out somewhere in a pub
still hoping; his queen of colors
entered eternity one cloudy day
agitated as an African acorn
descending into deep-scented peace
all to save the unsaved
and educate the illiterate
women of Algeria.