I guess what it amounts to, Conny, is that Hoagland's poem is rather ugly in terms of the N's thoughts, and not all that interesting, since it's old news:
There are moments when history
passes you so close
you can smell its breath,
you can reach your hand out
and touch it on its flank,
and I don't watch all that much Masterpiece Theatre,
but I could feel the end of an era there
in front of those bleachers full of people
in their Sunday tennis-watching clothes
Yes, an era has ended and a new one has begun. Is that something we don't know?
I do, however, enjoy the metaphor of history being like an animal whose breath "you can smell" and whose flank you can touch.
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