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"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Bio


Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville", where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry.


Matthew King


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On Cézanne's Successive Versions of "The Card Players"

When we began to play together, all of us shared
a common deck. The cards we dealt ourselves we also
dealt each other. Which of us first decided to bring
his own cards to the table, dealt to himself alone,
contemplated his own peculiar hand, which he kept
to himself? Who first replaced the cards with other things:
unanswered correspondence, lists of errands, receipts?
How long now have we held only blank scraps of paper?
Should we be glad at least to have nothing in common?
We leave this empty bottle stoppered on the table
as a symbol of bygone conviviality,
which we wouldn't breathe a word to revive, but agree
we must remember, without looking, almost touching.