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POETSWEST ONLINE
Volume XII, No. 2

Poems by Yearn Hong Choi, J. Glenn Evans, Christopher J. Jarmick, Lyn Lifshin, Jed Myers, Charles Portolano, RaynRoberts.


Brazil Poems by Yearn Hong Choi

Iguacu Fall

The sound of water falling made grandeur of Bach's music.
Small black birds flying between the bridal veils,
They were finally baptized and provided the most sacred service
To the Lord
In this world.

Yearn Hong Choi

**********

Hunting for Crocodile

After the darkness,
We set sail our canoe to the black river.
One aborigine standing in front of the canoe lit
His flashlight at the edge of water and jungle trees
Once in a while, while sailing.
After 20 minutes,<
He spotted red eyes.
Then, he walked into the water
and grabbed a baby crocodile with his hands.
A three-year-old crocodile was presented to 15 modern men and women
for their closer and personal look.
They touched and the crocodile skin, so soft and gentle.
Then, the reptile was sent to the water in the black river.
At the moment,
we saw the most clean and blue sky and a galaxy of shining stars,
The firework of hyacinth in front of us.
In our memories of the Amazon,
Such beautiful stars would always sparkle as diamonds under the moonlight.

Whenever our ladies go out for shopping,
The baby crocodile will come out from the crocodile handbag.

Yearn Hong Choi

**********

Green

I could not see any other color at the Amazon
Than green.

Indio's naked bodies and tattoo on their bodies
Were hidden in the green jungle.

The civilization should be green forever.

Yearn Hong Choi

**********

RIO de JANEIRO

A Portuguese ship crossing the Atlantic
Eventually sailed to the river.
It was January.>
So the explorers named the river
As Rio de Janeiro,
River of January,
The most beautiful name in Portuguese.
(The River was later found as the Bay).

Rio de Janeiro became one of the most beautiful ports
With its granite rocks which distinguished
The inner sea from the outer sea.
The Korean explorers could name Rio de Janeiro 
As the Han-Yeo-Soo-Do,*
A waterway from the island of Leisure Mountain
to City of Beautiful Water
In their South Sea.

*Han-Ryo-Soo-do: The sea from Hansando Island to Yeosoo in Korea's South Sea.
Yearn Hong Choi

**********

WAR AGAINST TERROR

The president is not guilty of getting into a War
And not guilty at all
Of the death toll
Of the US soldiers in Iraq.

The son of a rich man
He dodged the Vietnam War.

An imperialist's ignorance and arrogance
Are equal to the cruel terrorist's extremism
And cold blood attacks on the World Trade Center
And the London railroad stations.

I don't see the difference
Between the terrorist and the imperialist.

Stop the War!
It can be much easier than starting a war in Iraq.
Going to war and getting out of the war
Require one president's final decision.
But the president who dodged the Vietnam War
Must not know how to make that decision.

Alas!

After the president's declaration of victory,
More than 3000 US soldiers have been killed.
How many more will be killed before the end of the Occupation?
No one knows how many innocent Iraqi citizens
Have been killed by the insurgents.

The president does not know the tragedy of the USA,
But I know it.

Yearn Hong Choi

Yearn Hong Choi, the founding president of the Korean Poets and Writers Group in the Washington DC area, has published one poetry book, Autumn Vocabularies (Writers' Workshop, 1990), and four poetry books in the Korean language. His poems have appeared in the PoetryUSA, PEN International, PoetsWest, dIS*orient, Mildred, Wyoming, Washington Post, World & I among others, and were translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil. He edited Mother and Dove, Korean-American Poetry Anthology (Institute for Korean-American Culture, 1997), Surfacing Sadness: A Centennial of Korean-American Literature (Homa & Sekey Books, 2003) with Haengja Kim, and Fragrance of Poetry: Korean-American Literature (Homa & Sekey, 2005). He read his poems in the US Library of Congress in 1994 and 2003 as an invited poet. He published his poems in the Hyundae Munhak, the most prestigious literary magazine in Korea during his college days at Yonsei University. He reviews Korean literature for World Literature Today.


WAR OR POETRY

Indian wars we raided a village
Killed all men women and their little nits
Not poetry just followed orders

Spanish American War we blew up the ship
That gave an excuse for war
We paid them $15 million for their land
Not poetry we just followed orders

American Civil War we burned their homes
Traded for tobacco, joshed across the creek
Then between us we killed more'n a million
Not poetry we just followed orders

In the Great War we filled each other's trenches
With blood corpses vermin and trench rot
Not poetry we just followed orders

Second Great War we learned how to kill
Not one on one man to man
But found it cheaper wholesale
Not poetry we just followed orders

Korean War we took their hills
And gave them back
Kill Kill Kill and called it a draw
Not poetry we just followed orders

Vietnam got hot after Tonkin
Killed their leader
Others took ears for souvenirs
Not poetry we just followed orders

Iraq we made war a business
Some got rich others just died
All in the name of war on terrorists
Not poetry we just followed orders

But the world doesn't know who are terrorists
Do they bomb with planes or bodies
Some say don't write poetry about war
Others say war is poetry

J. Glenn Evans

J. Glenn Evans is the founder and managing director of PoetsWest and author of three books of poetry: Window in the Sky, Seattle Poems and Buffalo Tracks, a history of Sweden, two local biographies, and two novels: Broker Jim and Zeke's Revenge. Widely published in journals and anthologies. Recipient of 1999 WPA Faith Beamer Cooke Award and 2003 Seattle Free Lances Outstanding Writer's Award. Member of Washington Poets Association and Academy of American Poets. Listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World. Produces and hosts a weekly radio show of poetry and stories on KSER 90.7 FM.


Poem Starter # 500 by Christopher J. Jarmick

Instead of asking, "Is that poetry?"
or worry that poetry is being damaged
by young people who scream out
too many words, with imagined discipline. . .
Ask instead, "Where is Poetry."

NOT JUST ANOTHER DRIVE BY . . . ETC.

Not just another drive by, delivered in less than 30 minute Poetic Promise

I promise not to
dull your senses
through perversion
of language--
though I may surprise or even
shock you from time to time.

I won't abuse your trust
or gullibility like
politicians
who sell hypocritical concepts
and bastardize words like freedom.

I won't always tell you
what I think you want to hear.

I'll paint with words
using unclean brushes;
not covering my mistakes,
not touching up.

Hopefully an authenticity
emerges, helping you to
see things with more clarity
or at least differently enough
so less of life will be taken
for granted, feared, cheapened or wasted.

Imagine how your last hour might be in a movie,
in a song, if we were to make a dance of it,
or in a poem.

Imagine your next ten minutes.

Christopher J. Jarmick

**********

Poem Starter 750 by Christopher J. Jarmick

And when someone asks you,
"Why Poetry?"
Quietly shrug and without condescension
answer:
"because".
If that doesn't satisfy,
and you see this in their eyes
say with all the sincerity you can muster:
"Poetry is everything."

POETRY IS EVERYTHING -- Parts 1 & 2

1.
Poetry gives voice to love: pure, passionate
or lustful and a voice to loneliness too.  (ask Emily Dickinson)

Poetry invents its cadence, twists inside the soul,
exists even without rigid form.  (ask Walt Whitman)

Poetry immortalizes, romanticizes, the poor, the wealthy,
a triumph or tragedy  (ask William Shakespeare and William Blake).

Poetry dramatizes, humanizes: history, war, heroism,
cowardice, life  (ask Robert Browning and Randall Jarrell)

Poetry popularizes, re-defines shifting truths
and can be skeptical and reticent.  (ask Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost)

Poetry blends experience, re-frames little moments of life
through each of our senses.  (ask Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams)

Poetry spellbounds readers, entrances, shocks, amuses
and excites listeners,  (ask Theodore Roethke, and Gwendolyn Brooks)

Poetry finds the musicality of language, the lilt, the dash, the movement of words
(ask John Keats, William Butler Yeats and Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Poetry perplexes, challenges, informs, mystifies, conjures, defines
(ask Ezra Pound, and T.S. Elliot)

Poetry captures lightning in a bottle, memorializes,
blends languages, cultures  (ask Kenneth Rexroth, and W.H. Auden)

Poetry speaks of race, racism, borders, and boundaries, limitations and blindness
(ask Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, and Etheridge Knight)

Poetry never rests, it anguishes, antagonizes, hides between
unbearable pain, wails  (ask Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas)

Poetry rages, bellows, rants, yells, spits, breaks rules, get messy
(ask Allen Ginsberg and Muriel Rukeyser)

Poetry offers temporary balance, refuge, makes life bearable
at least for a while  (ask Anne Sexton and John Berryman)

2.

Poetry confesses, tells secrets, dares you to respond,
talk-back  (ask Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop)

Poetry dreams, politicizes, unites, demands attention
And can not help but romanticize about all of it.
(ask Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Pablo Neruda)

Poetry partnered with art or photograph,
makes a picture say 1000 and one words
(ask Denise Levertov and Frank O'Hara)

Poetry experiments, translates, feeds upon itself,
and educates (ask Robert Duncan, and Philip Larkin)

Poetry enriches music and defines generations
(ask John Lennon/Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Cole Porter, Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller, Carole King, Hoagy Carmichael and Bob Dylan)

Poetry dances with humor and wit, is rascally, sublime, renewed and is our friend
(ask Dr. Seuss, Ogden Nash, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shel Silverstein and E.E. Cummings)

Poetry is everything.

Copyright © 2005, 2007 Christopher J. Jarmick

Christopher J. Jarmick has been hosting weekly and monthly poetry readings in the Seattle area for over 8 years. He was born on the East Coast and spent several years in Los Angeles working on Emmy winning documentaries for PBS and producing segments for television shows like HardCopy, Enertainment Tonight, and many others. His novel, The Glass Cocoon, co-written with Serena Holder was published in 2001. He published his first poem ina national magazine when he was 12 years old and continues to have poems published in newspapers, magazines, literary journals and on the web. He also publishes essays articles, interviews and film reviews. He is the former executive vice president of the Washington Poets Association, the current President of PEN Washington and board member for PEN USA at Antioch College in Los Angeles. His day job is as a financial advisor with offices in downtown Seattle.


SOMETIMES IT TAKES SO LITTLE

there was the one who took in a diabetic
skinny stray, that was enough for me
to want him. Or the one whose parents
knew Dylan Thomas, had him as a guest.
He hugged the blues. That one held
me, stained me with that darkness,
played Sea Sea Rider as he told me he
had just heard two new folk singers in the
city, Baez and Dylan. Storytellers seem
to get to me. And the ones with a leg lost in
Nam, that will do it. I was a door mat to his
voice, knocked my knuckles raw trying to get
thru to him. I never felt safe until he was
dead tho his grave has followed me south.
He is probably spinning magic under this
first new snow at Arlington Cemetery.
And what can I do with another man I'm
haunted by who writes such small emails
I can imagine whatever I want out of
them but now I'm knocked down by his
stories. Sure it is icy and dicey and I'm
walking a tight rope walk over spiked glass
but when he writes of mesquite and cedar,
the perfume of agerita blossoms in starlight
I twist from the one who wants to keep
me in his bed. I'm Texas bound under curly
hair in search of this exotic with his
dogs, rough hands and gun in the cold of
January, ache for shimmery heat a coast away
by stories I have no clue where they'll end.

Lyn Lifshin

**********

THE STEERAGE

		Stieglitz Photogravure

My father tells us about leaving,
how on the night they left he had
to bring goats next door in the moon.
Since he was not the youngest, he
couldn't wait pressed under a shawl
of coarse cotton close to his mother's
breast as she whispered "hurry". Her
ankles were swollen from ten babies.
Though she was only 30 her ankles were
swollen from ten babies, her lank hair

hung in strings under the babushka she
swore she would burn in New York
City. She dreamt others pointed and
snickered near the tenement, that a
neighbor borrowed the only bowl that
was her mother's and broke it. That
night they left, every move had to be
secret. In rooms there was no heat
in, no one put on muddy shoes or talked.
It was forbidden to leave, a law they

broke like the skin of ice on pails of milk.
Years from then, a daughter would write
that he didn't have a word for America
yet, that night of a new moon. His
mother pressed his brother to her, warned
everyone even the babies must not make
a sound. Frozen branches creaked. My
father shivered at men with guns near
straw roofs on fire. It took their old samovar,

every coin to bribe someone to take them
to the train. "Pretend to be sleeping," his
father whispered as the conductor moved
near. His mother stuffed cotton in the baby's
mouth. She held the mortar and pestle wrapped
in his quilt of feathers closer, told him
he would sleep in this soft blue in the years
ahead. But that night in steerage, he was
knocked sideways into the ribs of the boat so
sea sick he couldn't swallow the orange some
one threw from an upstairs bunk tho it was
bright as sun and smelled of a new country
he could only imagine though never how his
mother would become a stranger to herself
there, forget why they risked dogs and guns
to come

Lyn Lifshin

Lyn Lifshin was born and raised in Vermont. Holds a B.A. in English from Syracuse University and an M.A. in English from the University of Vermont.
Her work has been widely published in magazines and cultural publications, including The American Scholar, Christian Science Monitor, Ploughshares, and Rolling Stone Magazine. Has written more than 125 books and edited four anthologies of women writers. Has also taught poetry and prose writing at universities, colleges and high schools, and has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. An award-winning writer, she is the subject of the documentary film Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. She resides in Virginia. Her website is http://www.lynlifshin.com/.


THE CYCLONE

How can we know the roar and press
   of all that wind and water mounting
higher, harder, till it tears
   our homes apart, tears us
from one another, throws us hard
   against the road, the rocks,
cracks our bones like teacup china,
   floods our lungs with salty foam,
and leaves us crushed, drowned, or lost
   in mud and ruin, when
we aren't the ones who've gone
   through it? We don't know.
I want to and I don't.
There was the hurricane up the east coast-
   must be fifty years ago. I watched
standing on my father's armchair, hands
   gripping its back, eyes up to the window.
I saw that fat mottled bough
   of the sycamore across the narrow road
shear from the trunk, could not hear
   any creak or groan for the torrent,
saw the branch crash on the chrome
   front of our black Buick, then
blown past that, catch
   on a swaying telephone pole. But all
the brick and glass I saw stayed
   intact. The mad orchestra cursed
the houses-wires fell
   and wavered like crazed snakes
on the shaking hedges and sizzled
   blacktop. The lights failed,
and as the dark came, we lit
   candles, Mom told us
the tale of the Johnstown flood,
   we laid extra blankets on our beds,
and slept well.
		I don't know
   the Burmese coast at all, its vast
exposure to the Bay of Bengal.

The windstorm here two winters back
   blew loose shingles off our roof.
My neighbor, who'd built a house,
   took my ladder and some spare
composite out of my garage
   and hammered down some patches-
the new roof came last summer.
The most I know of a force
   that can tear open a life
is a word or two out of the mouth
   of a woman I knew, thirty springs ago-
it was true she'd been with the curly-haired
   guy up the road the night before
when I couldn't find her. We stood
   on the dry sidewalk outside her house,
under another large sycamore, as
   an inside storm rose-I couldn't
hear her any more. Some cold
   power poured into my chest,
followed my chilled blood into the hollows
   of all my bones and blew them like flutes,
a dissonant moan through the channels of marrow,
   the skeletal tubes tempted to shatter
like crystal to the internal wail,
   but not an audible whimper
out into the still evening air. That's all
   the cyclone of sudden despair
I know-though all the surround,
   the Tudor houses, the tall broad trees,
stood as they were, as we did. My torso
   turned, my legs walked me
to my car, the fingers of one
   hand found my keys. My arms
and eyes ferried me safely home.
The ground under the feet of countless
   Burmese is stripped bare-the mud
must run with blood and fresh disease. Sons
   and mothers and sisters of thousands, numbed
and terrified survivors, must stand
   more naked before the great face of chaos
than I ever have or hope to-I don't
   want to know. But the exposures
I can recall-mostly that one blow
   of cold aloneness through my bones-
call me to wonder. What little
   I've had to learn, it's held
my tongue just out of the flood of anger,
   I can't tell how many times.
I'll see a shimmer of dread in the eyes
   of my child, my partner-the start
of a tear, and remember the cyclone
   in here, in this worn body.
I'll try, or hope, or pray,
   to offer back to the earth
the stirred force, to ground,
   to the ocean of atoms we
rise up from-let love
   gather and send the anger home
to its hidden furnaces, where the terrible
   winds begin, where the waters
take their churn. Each of us must
   come to know enough of the storm
in us, let the world come whistle
   its wild song through the small instrument
given, once before death.
   Otherwise, the air in the reed
of self will stay dry, stagnant, won't
   belong to the breath of life.

Jed Myers 5/12/08

Jed A. Myers
Born in Philadelphia. Studied poetry at Tufts University and served as editor of the Tufts Literary Magazine. He is a psychiatrist with a psychotherapy practice in Seattle where he lives with his wife and three children. His poems have appeared in Tufts Literary Magazine, This magazine, Innervisions (a spiritual journal), Forum (a psychoanalytic journal), on the Friends Journal web site and on NPR, Families, Systems and Health, Raven Chronicles, and in Poetica. His work also appears in A Shimmering Field from Writer's Haven.


THE AMERICAN WAY

As the lining of our pockets
grow empty, we quickly
forget about the rockets
that we indiscriminately
drop on innocent Iraqis.
 
Got to get the new blue-ray,
iPod, and the newest fads,
got to keep our kids 
dressed to kill, 
it's a tough world out there;
 
So get out of my way there's
a big sale today.
Out of sight, out of mind,
I don't have the time to care
what's going on somewhere
 
else in this wild world.
I'm worried about paying 
my mortgage, keeping my job
that I hate, getting up earlier
to face a boss I despise
 
for he constantly tells lies,
so don't tell me of the woos
of others far, far away.
I work longer and harder
for far less pay, knowing
 
that the powers that be 
keep it this way on purpose.
Hey, get out of my way, it's 
Sunday I got to go off to pray,
Luckily, In God We Trust.

Charles Portolano

**********

LEAVING THE LIGHT BEHIND

Driven I am to desert
my vehicle
by the side of the road
and make my way
into Indian Territory
to be touched by the spirit
of the wilderness
 
Deeper and deeper
I walk into darkness
of the desert
leaving the bright lights 
far behind 
as I walk silently 
into the barren wasteland
 
I journey on 
searching for what 
I am not sure,
but I do know
what I am leaving behind,
as my cell phone
shatters the silence
 
I shout out, a war call,
to free my mind
from being so connected
with the destruction
of our good earth,
searching for the spiritual
in the everyday
 
In the name of progress
I throw this device
far away from me,
as I start to run
from the bright lights
that steal the fading stars
from the night sky
 
I run as my lungs
burn with the desire
to breathe in clean air,
taste pure water,
hear the long gone
call of the coyote
on the evening wind
 
Finally I am forced to rest,
settling myself,
in the long shadow
of a giant saguaro,
looking up and out
into the night sky,
arrayed with countless stars
 
In the warm, strong glow 
of a full white moon,
two coyotes call
to one another
from far away hilltops,
I hear my heart proudly
beat against my heaving chest.

Charles Portolano

**********

DECEMBER 29, 1890

Massacre : the violent, cruel, and indiscriminate 
killing of a large number of people or animals. 

Who could have known,
have told, on this day in 1890,
that the massacre would occur,
point-blank,
at the edge of Wounded Knee?
Since Sitting Bull's death,
now Sioux Chief, Big Foot,
would step into history.
The trouble brewing for months, 
the White man ready
to arrest Big Foot,
disarm his warriors,
 
then send them off to Oklahoma
for dancing the Ghost Dance,
to live free or die, now that
their free-roaming life 
taken from them, gone, 
the buffalo gone,
now a life of confinement,
far from their ancient,
ancestral burial grounds,
on the White man's Reservation,
dependent on White Indian Agents
for their very existence.
 
Surrendering their souls,
for gone is their way of life,
with that sudden, single gunshot
in the freezing morning gloom,
sending the Indian Braves 
scurrying for the few hidden rifles;
under orders from their officers,
the blue-coat soldiers fired
volley after volley zipping
through the unarmed camp.
Who could have known,
have told, on this day in 1890
 
that nearly 300
braves, women, and children
would have their lives taken,
cut down in the cross-fire,
slaughtered like the buffalo
on the open plains,
as they tried to escape
into the nearby ravine,
under the cloud of gun smoke
the blue-coats killed 25 
of their own 
in the frenzy of friendly fire?
Who could have known,
have told, on this day in 1890,
that when the smoke cleared, 
their teepees burned to the ground,
and the shooting finally stopped,
that the White man's final "battle" 
at Wounded Knee would
silence the Collective Spirit
of the Native Americans,
ending 350 years 
of the White man's war
against the Indian Nations?

Charles Portolano

Charles Portolano
Charles Portolano was stationed at Luke AFB outside of Phoenix in 1977-78,fell in love with the desert and five years ago moved to Fountain Hills, Arizona. His most recent poetry book, All Eyes On Us, was published by The Rockford Writers' Guild in 2007.


RaynRoberts' response to the tale of Hell freezing over, as explained by a Chemistry Student

In Response to the News that Hell Has Frozen Over

Well that explains all the homeless demons with head colds
Camped on earth
shivering and sneezing, hacking and coughing on us
trying to make us all sick
make Hell here so they can feel comfortable!

Just last night I saw Lucifer
dragging his cold pointed tail behind him
like a whipped dog
like he'd lost the war with God or something...

He stopped over my bed and said...

"We thought we had something special
we thought we had it made in eternal Hell
where everything stayed the same
and We were in control...
But we didn't know there was something worse

Earthly existence
where everything changes all the time
one minute
it's something like Hell,
then worse...
something near to Heaven!

But I think the truest torture
is the time between
when we have to deal with what we never had in Hell,
Boredom...
Ennui, free floating anxiety over the possibility
of Peace breaking out!

Dreadful stuff like that.

Half my staff is sick with fever or chest colds;
the other half
needs Prozac to make it through a day!

Then there's this thing called Karma...

You see, we never took in Hindus or Buddhists
they were always recycling bodies
or didn't believe in Souls...
and now we find out
they had it right all along.

Jews, Muslims, Christians
they were easy to invite in...
They believed in Hell,

but those Eastern people

WOW!

They walked by the our gates and kept on going...
Never quite knew where they ended up.
Some became great people
Like the Dalai Lama, Bill Gates, Ophra Winfrey...

Horrors!

I don't think I'd survive an hour in a body or soul that Good,
...all that talking, education, connecting
giving, blessings, mantras...
My Hades...
It's too much to think about!

I'm too busy keeping people addicted to Heroin
and TV
too bent on getting them sold into
Credit Card slavery
too occupied with ministers and priests in bed
with young boys
too focused on creating market economies
in India and China
selling more fossil fuels
poisoning air and earth
yeah, fossil fuels, one of my best ideas
better than the bomb even
For Evil sake, I have to figure out how to shut Al Gore up!

It's a thankless job and thanks to that devil forsaken pacifist Gandhi
those Quaker creeps
those awful Amish people
most people know my biggest project
has always been War...

Yeah, it's a never ending job and so
a bit like Hell in that respect
and I miss the good old days
before my family had to leave home to the ice
and cold, the beauty
of all that white drifting snow."

Then, as he spilled Contac capsules
on the cover of my bed
He gave a pathetic look and a high pitched sneeze
and vanished...

But I don't think I've seen the last of him yet.

RaynRoberts, Seattle '08

RaynRoberts, a poet who writes about peace, war, political and social issues was born in Jacksonville, NC and is a long-time resident of San Diego and a graduate of the University of San Diego where he studied English Literature and Religion. He recently spent several years teaching in South Korea. He's published three books. His latest collection, published by Poetic Matrix Press in August 2006, is Of One and Many Worlds. The Fires of Spring, a collection of Buddhist poems, is reviewed by editors at The Golden Lantern and Poetic Voices. In 2006 he was included by Evolving Editions in their interfaith understanding series Illuminations. His work appears in the printed anthologies: The Book of Hope and The World Healing Book from Beyond Borders Press ~ In the Arms of Words: Poems for Disaster Relief by Foothills Publishing and Sherman Asher and The Philosophical Library of Escondido California's New Anthology entitled Paths. He is widely published. He toured the country in 2003 to promote a collection of experimental and traditional forms, Jazz Cocktails and Soapbox Songs.


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