Crossing Over

Björn Olinder’s Pictures

I have learned about dying by looking at two pictures
Björn Olinder needed to look at when he was dying:
a girl whose features are obscured by the fall of her hair
planting a flower,
and a seascape: beyond the headland
a glimpse of immaculate sand that awaits our footprints.

Michael Longley (1937), in anthology Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times (2003)

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