Tony Brinkley
Aristide Blank
the Michaelmas daisies, huddled down or
curled up in the changes, white as asters,
pausing at the juncture like a stranger.
Poor Blank—who never learned to swim—
rocks cloud his feet wherever he looks for life,
wind-crickets ringing from the gusts
of wind jump out onto his ledge with colors
from the meadow (when you look, they
are gone from Blank’s vicinity), burnt
umber, daddylonglegs blending into mica,
mimicking a seed. Will Blank go to
heaven? Blank is already in heaven. Blank
is happier than he thinks. Grasshoppers
bring a meadow to his table. Blank offers
catnip to cowbirds—milk clouds at his
footsteps—Blank in the catbird’s seat
is like an owl at sea. Blank is a poseur.
on Sunday. Bouquets of asters, tiny prescient
stars, reflected in the polish of Blank’s table. Rumors
outside the shutters, tremors that threaten the quiet.
Blank’s decorum eases with disturbances—his
room arranges to alter a moment’s interruption.
Change is Blank’s forte, he engineers the combustion.
Leni shudders. Where would she be without Blank?
I wonder. Blank stretches like a cat beside the heater.
“Come to the window.” The sun slips past on his
fingers. Blank is the wizard of minutiae. In his hands,
your muslins are silk, your skin, silk’s rhymed liquidities.
Blank would do. Blank imagines standing
by the window, feathering your wings. What should
I make of Blank’s antics, the doors he does not
keep closed, the locks he unlocks as precautions,
the night he lets in on flood-lights and polishes on
his bed-clothes, then boxes for you to eat? My love,
Blank writes on the outside, and darkness softens within.
cascading anger around him,
a break-water for blood rage.
Was it the moon, tidal? Blank
remembers remembering, wondering,
more intrigued than fearful, that his heart
would race in this way while his blood
pooled in reflections, mirroring fervor.
I don’t go back, Blanks says, but he does,
to mid-June, holding its breath . . .
that Blank is still happy although the world
is beset? Blank is happy in a happy world,
Blank is oblivious—the grasshopper stirring
the goldenrod, Blank among quotations
—from his ledge, surveying the season.
The Devil might care, but Blank is giving
up banking—his views are turquoise, today
reflecting the mixtures of fading clouds that
leave Blank unruffled—he does not recall
the young men who beat him—they beat but
he feels unbeaten; instead he alters the balance.
The fires burn down but Blank flares,
Blank’s history is burning, my stillness thrives
in Blank’s memory, the mushrooms spored
from burnt offerings, the critical mass where
the dreams are, their ragged simplicity . . .
and falling water turns the rising ashes
into mud. By preference Blank’s face
is clean, his dress as immaculate as
he is, albeit somber—a man on the way
to his office—but not without colors
Leni learns to associate with birds,
the red or yellow shimmer among wings
—Blank’s ties and handkerchiefs,
the silks that remind him of Leni and
happiness. Blank prefers
to avoid the devastations
that are always on his mind
but hidden in his colors.
Red? Not red. Then yellow? Not yellow.
Blank wants to be buried in blue, Prussian blue
with gleams from welcoming fires—lacquered
to see your face in, but Leni takes the side
of Blank’s reader. Leni wants an inscription,
she wants to reflect Blank’s moon-phases—
Blank in memoriam—with captions.
“How shall I dress?” she asks Blank.
“As you would like me to dress?”
as during the day, when Blank changes
character, as varied as character offers—
his characters, perhaps—Blank likes to be
more than one, to shuffle his cards—but at
night the simian voices—Blank’s friends—
are often unkind, not awed by his facility
and conscious beneath the polish of the nerve
that howls—exposed to their ministrations, to the
chattering in which each betrayal Blank knows,
every sordidness, is his, infesting the clear-cut
edge Blank presents to the world as a work
of Leni’s appetites. But now: “Go to sleep,
dear voices, sleep well—you will still be famished
in the morning.” This tenderness extends Blank’s
nightmares that cherish his night-life’s after-hours.
what to write. Are clouds like that? I am
not a cloud but like a cloud about to be
a cat or owl or the mouse for a cat
to prowl for, but I pounce, and Leni, being
Leni—you compose the changing weather.
we all crazy at times.” “Look what Blank has
gone through—to start with, the 20th century—
and now in its endless afterword”—“the exclusion
of Blank from the commentaries that exhaustively
catalog margins”—“not that Blank complains,”
but “he visits me at odd hours . . . unable to see
Blank’s face.” Excerpts from Leni’s daybook.
and Blank—for the moment
their faces are terrifying. “Blank,” Leni
says, “is the fish swimming in my belly . . .”
is imminent but not yet—she has no umbrella
nor interest in shelter, the rain is one of her
elements, just as wind is for Blank—and wind
lashing the rain in my eyes, their insistence together—
their furious pleasure whispering my love.
in the water even if he drowns. This will
be dangerous—Blank, turned liquid,
shivering his way under, entering the water,
his nerves the wind-ripple, imagining Leni,
swimming night-channels’ desertions.
October, he sees dark water in sunlight, the sun
low at its height, the water Blank reclines
on—he would die there if he swam there—
his boat floats above where
drowning is otherwise his option,
this is how death seems to Blank now, a place
where he drowns but now floats above—
but only because he has friends who can sail
Blank’s boat—but it is not Blank’s boat, it is
their boat, Blank is only their passenger—
speculating the cost of falling in—but no
danger really, not this time,
next time . . . sienna of the rocks
in the sun-glare and the dark
pouring out of its recesses,
in between, foam reaches into,
which Blank imagines without sight,
not blindness in place of vision but
no sight at all—my love, my dear love—
only sound below lapping, a kiss, perhaps
a kind of tongue, a hungry gravity.
their faces—hours go unnoticed—others take
their place: Leni’s face as mirrored and Blank’s,
my own—my stillness, close by—pleasure
as if drinking were all we could desire—eyes
timed briefly by glancing for each other—
precautions set aside for kindred desertions,
blessing for the moment become a minute’s
semen, Blank with Leni and my satisfaction—
unexpectedly—clocks are forgotten—I
welcome the transport, Blank moistens
tempos and Leni collects time in rivulets.
Blank prefers starlings—little stars—because
they are despised. Today, four crows and no
snow as yet. “Food will be scarce this winter,”
Blank writes, “time wasted, cold—though even
this cold is not cold enough. If crows, Leni, were
like starlings and chances for little stars
optimal, the transports might also be favorable,
you might still find a way to the country.”
their unclipped nails hooking Blank half-awake
and easing, as if from his insect-shell—although
Blank is vertebrate—experientially. “It is time,
Blank, to come out soft-skinned”—Leni’s night-
words are forceps—Blank whimpers, half-sleeping,
“Leni . . . Is there still time for the emergency?
Are your friends still waiting in the street?”
in the dark, although Blank does not see her,
Then a momentary surface darts—
Leni likes fishing underneath.
Blank was among the missing, summering
without Leni on a ski-slope, stealing sun-
glare from crosses, alloyed with iron.
knows Conductor well, too well to be startled
by his laughter—cruelty, light-hearted
in this setting, expecting to be paid for
a twinkle in his eye, and Blank is poorer
than Conductor, business with Conductor
is costly—this much for this life—less
for the next—“You were the banker!”
And Leni? Blank sips carefully, unimaginably,
gently; Conductor sips greedily, unimaginably,
thirsty. Both feel sickened by their napkins,
the monograms like raspberries.
Leni—Blank for the moment,
subtle with the boundaries
of a grass snake, near
a poised stone, shadow-
edged, miraged to recoil.
Leni, showering—imagining rain—
as if she were rain—as if rain were
free—as free as she feels at
the moment. Blank thinks that
rain is freer than she knows because
Leni showers him with freedoms.
burned me back to childhood
where every word is an ocean, and
Leni and Blank, like parents,
swim me between them,
tincturing betony . . .
where I most hoped to avoid
everything possible.
They lure me into
the promise, shape-changing as cloud-like
as I can to slip past—but they hold me tight,
predictably variable,
offering me their constancy—
creating me as they can
until I take them—
not as I hoped—
not on my own—in my power—
but only as they might persist
nursing a child.
Blank’s mountains from
his loneliness—Leni,
among the cumulus.
Look, Leni. Mountains
from a shadow-play.
He remembers when even the heroic
was alive. Then the bad times
came, misfortunes in the mountains,
of which he still wishes not to speak,
the marches dead-ending the promise,
euphemistically on the way to April,
accumulating the reminders, signs
of the beloved, dead to touch, arches
of delicate bone fragments, so much effort
in the feet, the architect’s triumphs, scraps
of tendons from Blank’s visits to his dead.
Of course Blank survived—not like the others,
Blank always survives. We arrive for
oranges and tangos—like early transports
to the country—where Blank and Leni preside.
and desires—they break
the backs of women—
carefree dawning for
the landlord's organs—phalanxed,
his angelic orders snake the penetralia
and the spine snaps, loosening
the veinstones. Then toward dawn
we understand, the back breaks.
the search for Blank, out of impulse,
the way of being
in Blank’s dwelling, Leni,
finished not completely
with the storm-door slightly open to
the light wind and the little sun—a budding stick,
albeit pruned, so not for long, a clipping.
as casually as saying my name in a whisper,
and Blank, years after, remembers his pleasure
at a name that does not alter like swallows
. . . but moss, she remembers,
moss the next morning . . .
I imagined you as happily as I could, swallow-
tailing the letters, circumstances being as they are,
challenged, darker than I expected and ceilinged,
the way my skull feels weighted by your impossibility.
If I call my impossibilities “Blank,” sometimes they
seem possible. When I call possibilities
“Leni,” impossibilities breathe freely.
the time before he starts up,
Leni awake, the night put aside,
the skull-shell open to leave—
a dancer’s split—into herself—
opened to welcome you out.
Note
Tony Brinkley’s poetry has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Review of Literature, Cerise Press, Drunken Boat, Otoliths, and Poetry Salzburg Review. His translations from Russian, German, and French have appeared in Shofar, Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Review of Literature, Cerise Press, May Day, World Literature Today,and Hungarian Review. He is the author of Stalin’s Eyes (Puckerbrush Press) and the co-editor with Keith Hanley of Romantic Revisions (Cambridge University Press).
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Aristide Blank
“There are such things as hours and eternities. A whole wealth
of eternities exists, and not one of them has any beginning.
At the first opportune moment they come bursting forth.”
—Boris Pasternak,
“The Mark of Apelles”
of eternities exists, and not one of them has any beginning.
At the first opportune moment they come bursting forth.”
—Boris Pasternak,
“The Mark of Apelles”
Blank is my heroWhere is Blank? Combing and gleaning
the Michaelmas daisies, huddled down or
curled up in the changes, white as asters,
pausing at the juncture like a stranger.
Poor Blank—who never learned to swim—
rocks cloud his feet wherever he looks for life,
wind-crickets ringing from the gusts
of wind jump out onto his ledge with colors
from the meadow (when you look, they
are gone from Blank’s vicinity), burnt
umber, daddylonglegs blending into mica,
mimicking a seed. Will Blank go to
heaven? Blank is already in heaven. Blank
is happier than he thinks. Grasshoppers
bring a meadow to his table. Blank offers
catnip to cowbirds—milk clouds at his
footsteps—Blank in the catbird’s seat
is like an owl at sea. Blank is a poseur.
Blank has lunchAt lunch at Blank’s with Leni
on Sunday. Bouquets of asters, tiny prescient
stars, reflected in the polish of Blank’s table. Rumors
outside the shutters, tremors that threaten the quiet.
Blank’s decorum eases with disturbances—his
room arranges to alter a moment’s interruption.
Change is Blank’s forte, he engineers the combustion.
Leni shudders. Where would she be without Blank?
I wonder. Blank stretches like a cat beside the heater.
“Come to the window.” The sun slips past on his
fingers. Blank is the wizard of minutiae. In his hands,
your muslins are silk, your skin, silk’s rhymed liquidities.
Blank is shamelessAt times at a loss, Blank wonders what
Blank would do. Blank imagines standing
by the window, feathering your wings. What should
I make of Blank’s antics, the doors he does not
keep closed, the locks he unlocks as precautions,
the night he lets in on flood-lights and polishes on
his bed-clothes, then boxes for you to eat? My love,
Blank writes on the outside, and darkness softens within.
Blank is beatenBlank remembers the beating,
cascading anger around him,
a break-water for blood rage.
Was it the moon, tidal? Blank
remembers remembering, wondering,
more intrigued than fearful, that his heart
would race in this way while his blood
pooled in reflections, mirroring fervor.
I don’t go back, Blanks says, but he does,
to mid-June, holding its breath . . .
Blank adopts a devil-may-care attitudeBut why would the Devil care about Blank,
that Blank is still happy although the world
is beset? Blank is happy in a happy world,
Blank is oblivious—the grasshopper stirring
the goldenrod, Blank among quotations
—from his ledge, surveying the season.
The Devil might care, but Blank is giving
up banking—his views are turquoise, today
reflecting the mixtures of fading clouds that
leave Blank unruffled—he does not recall
the young men who beat him—they beat but
he feels unbeaten; instead he alters the balance.
Blank at the altarI never ask what Blank is thinking.
The fires burn down but Blank flares,
Blank’s history is burning, my stillness thrives
in Blank’s memory, the mushrooms spored
from burnt offerings, the critical mass where
the dreams are, their ragged simplicity . . .
Blank avoids the wreckageIt isn’t always so easy—not when it rains,
and falling water turns the rising ashes
into mud. By preference Blank’s face
is clean, his dress as immaculate as
he is, albeit somber—a man on the way
to his office—but not without colors
Leni learns to associate with birds,
the red or yellow shimmer among wings
—Blank’s ties and handkerchiefs,
the silks that remind him of Leni and
happiness. Blank prefers
to avoid the devastations
that are always on his mind
but hidden in his colors.
Leni takes the side of Blank’s readerPainting a coffin, Leni asks Blank for colors.
Red? Not red. Then yellow? Not yellow.
Blank wants to be buried in blue, Prussian blue
with gleams from welcoming fires—lacquered
to see your face in, but Leni takes the side
of Blank’s reader. Leni wants an inscription,
she wants to reflect Blank’s moon-phases—
Blank in memoriam—with captions.
“How shall I dress?” she asks Blank.
“As you would like me to dress?”
Blank’s dementiaBut at night it is never so easy, not as easy
as during the day, when Blank changes
character, as varied as character offers—
his characters, perhaps—Blank likes to be
more than one, to shuffle his cards—but at
night the simian voices—Blank’s friends—
are often unkind, not awed by his facility
and conscious beneath the polish of the nerve
that howls—exposed to their ministrations, to the
chattering in which each betrayal Blank knows,
every sordidness, is his, infesting the clear-cut
edge Blank presents to the world as a work
of Leni’s appetites. But now: “Go to sleep,
dear voices, sleep well—you will still be famished
in the morning.” This tenderness extends Blank’s
nightmares that cherish his night-life’s after-hours.
Blank writes to Leni in her absenceDear Leni, Blank writes, I don’t know
what to write. Are clouds like that? I am
not a cloud but like a cloud about to be
a cat or owl or the mouse for a cat
to prowl for, but I pounce, and Leni, being
Leni—you compose the changing weather.
And Leni again“I do not think Blank is crazy”—or, “aren’t
we all crazy at times.” “Look what Blank has
gone through—to start with, the 20th century—
and now in its endless afterword”—“the exclusion
of Blank from the commentaries that exhaustively
catalog margins”—“not that Blank complains,”
but “he visits me at odd hours . . . unable to see
Blank’s face.” Excerpts from Leni’s daybook.
Leni and Blank’s exposureToday, at lunch, with Leni
and Blank—for the moment
their faces are terrifying. “Blank,” Leni
says, “is the fish swimming in my belly . . .”
Whispering loveLeni is lost to the cloud-shapes in which rain
is imminent but not yet—she has no umbrella
nor interest in shelter, the rain is one of her
elements, just as wind is for Blank—and wind
lashing the rain in my eyes, their insistence together—
their furious pleasure whispering my love.
Blank at nightBlank enters his liquid phase, at home
in the water even if he drowns. This will
be dangerous—Blank, turned liquid,
shivering his way under, entering the water,
his nerves the wind-ripple, imagining Leni,
swimming night-channels’ desertions.
Blank sailingWhen Blank looks out from his boat in warm
October, he sees dark water in sunlight, the sun
low at its height, the water Blank reclines
on—he would die there if he swam there—
his boat floats above where
drowning is otherwise his option,
this is how death seems to Blank now, a place
where he drowns but now floats above—
but only because he has friends who can sail
Blank’s boat—but it is not Blank’s boat, it is
their boat, Blank is only their passenger—
speculating the cost of falling in—but no
danger really, not this time,
next time . . . sienna of the rocks
in the sun-glare and the dark
pouring out of its recesses,
in between, foam reaches into,
which Blank imagines without sight,
not blindness in place of vision but
no sight at all—my love, my dear love—
only sound below lapping, a kiss, perhaps
a kind of tongue, a hungry gravity.
Without antecedentsWhen Blank takes his time, he turns clocks on
their faces—hours go unnoticed—others take
their place: Leni’s face as mirrored and Blank’s,
my own—my stillness, close by—pleasure
as if drinking were all we could desire—eyes
timed briefly by glancing for each other—
precautions set aside for kindred desertions,
blessing for the moment become a minute’s
semen, Blank with Leni and my satisfaction—
unexpectedly—clocks are forgotten—I
welcome the transport, Blank moistens
tempos and Leni collects time in rivulets.
To Leni, from the countryCrows follow in Blank’s footsteps, but
Blank prefers starlings—little stars—because
they are despised. Today, four crows and no
snow as yet. “Food will be scarce this winter,”
Blank writes, “time wasted, cold—though even
this cold is not cold enough. If crows, Leni, were
like starlings and chances for little stars
optimal, the transports might also be favorable,
you might still find a way to the country.”
Leni’s and Blank’s night-wordsNight-words have fingers through the tendons,
their unclipped nails hooking Blank half-awake
and easing, as if from his insect-shell—although
Blank is vertebrate—experientially. “It is time,
Blank, to come out soft-skinned”—Leni’s night-
words are forceps—Blank whimpers, half-sleeping,
“Leni . . . Is there still time for the emergency?
Are your friends still waiting in the street?”
Leni fishingLeni begins beneath the surface, closely
in the dark, although Blank does not see her,
Then a momentary surface darts—
Leni likes fishing underneath.
Missing in actionWhen angels came looking for Blank,
Blank was among the missing, summering
without Leni on a ski-slope, stealing sun-
glare from crosses, alloyed with iron.
ConducatorConductor invites Blank for coffee. Blank
knows Conductor well, too well to be startled
by his laughter—cruelty, light-hearted
in this setting, expecting to be paid for
a twinkle in his eye, and Blank is poorer
than Conductor, business with Conductor
is costly—this much for this life—less
for the next—“You were the banker!”
And Leni? Blank sips carefully, unimaginably,
gently; Conductor sips greedily, unimaginably,
thirsty. Both feel sickened by their napkins,
the monograms like raspberries.
Blank’s recoilSecretions of a snake skin—
Leni—Blank for the moment,
subtle with the boundaries
of a grass snake, near
a poised stone, shadow-
edged, miraged to recoil.
Leni, showering—imagining rain—
as if she were rain—as if rain were
free—as free as she feels at
the moment. Blank thinks that
rain is freer than she knows because
Leni showers him with freedoms.
My tincturesLeni’s incinerations have
burned me back to childhood
where every word is an ocean, and
Leni and Blank, like parents,
swim me between them,
tincturing betony . . .
This is for meBlank and Leni find me improbably
where I most hoped to avoid
everything possible.
They lure me into
the promise, shape-changing as cloud-like
as I can to slip past—but they hold me tight,
predictably variable,
offering me their constancy—
creating me as they can
until I take them—
not as I hoped—
not on my own—in my power—
but only as they might persist
nursing a child.
Mountains of two fingersUp from below,
Blank’s mountains from
his loneliness—Leni,
among the cumulus.
Look, Leni. Mountains
from a shadow-play.
Blank’s hysteriaBlank is writing a history of dead feet.
He remembers when even the heroic
was alive. Then the bad times
came, misfortunes in the mountains,
of which he still wishes not to speak,
the marches dead-ending the promise,
euphemistically on the way to April,
accumulating the reminders, signs
of the beloved, dead to touch, arches
of delicate bone fragments, so much effort
in the feet, the architect’s triumphs, scraps
of tendons from Blank’s visits to his dead.
Of course Blank survived—not like the others,
Blank always survives. We arrive for
oranges and tangos—like early transports
to the country—where Blank and Leni preside.
Dear Blank, it is not what they want but because of their forceAngels come with crosses
and desires—they break
the backs of women—
carefree dawning for
the landlord's organs—phalanxed,
his angelic orders snake the penetralia
and the spine snaps, loosening
the veinstones. Then toward dawn
we understand, the back breaks.
Blank forgets to take the horn out of his mouthThe thought-scope instilling—
the search for Blank, out of impulse,
the way of being
in Blank’s dwelling, Leni,
finished not completely
with the storm-door slightly open to
the light wind and the little sun—a budding stick,
albeit pruned, so not for long, a clipping.
NamingLeni calls “lover” inadvertently—
as casually as saying my name in a whisper,
and Blank, years after, remembers his pleasure
at a name that does not alter like swallows
. . . but moss, she remembers,
moss the next morning . . .
Standing on my headWhen it was colder than I thought possible,
I imagined you as happily as I could, swallow-
tailing the letters, circumstances being as they are,
challenged, darker than I expected and ceilinged,
the way my skull feels weighted by your impossibility.
If I call my impossibilities “Blank,” sometimes they
seem possible. When I call possibilities
“Leni,” impossibilities breathe freely.
Leni, like Sophia by the Black Sea.It may come down to minutes,
the time before he starts up,
Leni awake, the night put aside,
the skull-shell open to leave—
a dancer’s split—into herself—
opened to welcome you out.
Note
Aristide Blank, the fiction, is not Aristide Blank, my Grandfather’s cousin, the Jewish-Rumanian banker, who died in Paris in 1960; I have only borrowed his name and occasional details from his biography including the name of a casual lover, the actress Leni Caler.
Blank’s namesake, the banker, was the President of the Banca Marmarosch, Blank & Co. He came from a family of court-jews who funded Rumanian royalty and aristocracy. His father, the bank founder, was the first Jewish citizen of Rumania. These connections probably saved Blank’s life during World War II, when his intimacy with the Rumanian Conducator, the dictator Ion Antonesceau, placed him in a position to pay exorbitant bribes. Before the war, Blank was a founder of the airline that became Air France. During the 20s and 30s Blank’s generosity helped support innumerable artists like Leni Caler and the dramatist Michael Sebastian. In return they paid him court. Some rumors speak of a liaison between Blank and Queen Marie of Rumania but this is far-fetched.
An April 14, 1924 article in Time magazine reports an incident that no one in my family recalls: “Aristide Blank, the most prominent banker in Rumania, was discussing the monetary policy of Rumania at the King Carol Economic Institute when the lecture-hall was invaded by a band of fifty anti-Jewish student terrorists, armed with clubs. They beat the Jewish banker unmercifully until he was rescued by M. Titulesco, Rumanian minister to London. The incident inaugurated an anti-Semitic reign of terror that lasted in Bucharest until several regiments of troops had been called out to get the situation in hand. The outbreak was openly encouraged by the Bratiano Cabinet, following the opening of the trial of six students at the Bucharest University on the charge of attempting to murder M. Rosenthal, prominent Hebrew editor, and of plotting to kill Aristide Blank, his father, the editors of all the Jewish newspapers and several Cabinet Ministers suspected of having ‘sold themselves to the Jews.’”
In 1932, in retaliation for a close working relationship between the Banca Marmarosch-Blank and Italy’s Mussolini, France’s Laval government (at the time, anti-Fascist) forced the bankruptcy of Blank’s bank. The bank was reorganized, however, and survived under the same name until 1948, when it was nationalized by the new Communist government. Blank was arrested. After some years in a re-education camp, he was allowed to emigrate to Paris. I met him once—an elderly man in a luminescently white hospital room, who emerged from under a white sheet, raised his right arm, and said something that pleased my mother but that I did not understand.
Tony Brinkley’s poetry has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Review of Literature, Cerise Press, Drunken Boat, Otoliths, and Poetry Salzburg Review. His translations from Russian, German, and French have appeared in Shofar, Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Review of Literature, Cerise Press, May Day, World Literature Today,and Hungarian Review. He is the author of Stalin’s Eyes (Puckerbrush Press) and the co-editor with Keith Hanley of Romantic Revisions (Cambridge University Press).
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