On the Road With My Pal, Reba
Friday, February 19, 2010
On the Road With My Pal Reba
 V.2.3.
I did most of this issue, including this part, ahead of time, so I don't really know where I am as I post this. Somewhere in Arizona, if I'm on schedule. As I write this, I don't have any pictures, except the one above, to post, and I'm hoping that when the magic post time comes, I will have pictures from my travels to that point. I will have pictures of something, for sure, it just remains to be seen what.
Setting all that present and future confusion aside, I am pleased to present Amna Tariq Shah as my featured poet for the week.
Amna says she was born in 1984, to a Muslim family in Peshawar, Pakistan. She is a writer and a poet. She writes short stories, prose and poems.
She received her early education from Beaconhouse School Systems, Peshawar. Later, she passed her B.A from F.G. Degree College, Peshawar with English Literature and Psychology as her majors. In 2007, she received her M.A degree in English Literature and applied linguistics from Dept. of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Peshawar, Peshawar.
After completing her masters degree, she worked as a lecturer in English, in Peshawar Model Degree College for girls in Peshawar, for a time period of two years. She is currently working as a freelance writer for an Australian writing company "Write On."
Having Urdu and Pashto as her mother tongues, she has chosen English as her medium of writing so that her work can be read by a wider sphere of people.
I spent nearly a year in Peshawar 42 years ago. It was a time of trouble for that country and I didn't get to see very much of it, sometimes feeling that, although I was there, I wasn't ever really there at all. So now, here is this young poet, born in this city nearly 20 years after I left it.
Time and distance is nothing, it turns out, nothing, at least, that is beyond the boundaries of life's flows and cycles.
Here's the rest of this week’s agenda.
Me on the road with my pal Reba
Lesley Clark Brown Bet you, son of man dance
Amna Tariq Shah The Beauty and the Bee
Me and a good morning to you, too, buckaroo
Czeslaw Milosz Ars Poetica? The Song On the End of the World
Me original sin
Amna Tariq Shah The Real Love of a Mother and a Child
Langston Hughes The Dream Keeper Negro Dancers Reasons Why Night and Morn
Amna Tariq Shah Hope
Me they come from beyond
Duane Niatum Drawings of the Song Animals
Louis (Little Coon) Oliver Empty kettle
Lance Henson near twelve point
Me walking with my dog on a new-bright day
Amna Tariq Shah The Midnight Lamp
Coleman Barks Easter Morning, 1992 An Up Till Now Uncelebrated Joy Fixing the Door
Amna tariq Shah An Outcast
Me pure as the driven snow, again
Lorna Dee Cervantes Uncle's First Rabbit
Me stupid is

I start this week with one of my own, the title poem in fact. I'll have more poems next week about my little drive-around. This is the one that starts it off.
on the road with my pal Reba
the car is packed, luggage and Reba in the back
a box of CD's in the front
the drive for today, 556 miles, San Antonio to El Paso
(you know you're in Texas when your GPS lady tells you, "drive straight, 375 miles, then turn left")
a long drive from rocky hills to desert sands
mostly boring after the first several hundred miles and you get into the desert where cactus passing at 80 miles an hour begins to look pretty much the same
i've done this many times - it's what you have to do from here to get anywhere where you can start getting somewhere -
this trip, getting somewhere means Lake Tahoe four days from now and i'm anxious to get moving
the sun's up the car's packed and loaded breakfast's finished this poem is about running down to, for better or worse, its conclusion
and Reba waits

I start this week with three poems by Lesley Clark, from her book An Absence of Color, published in 2000 by Orchard Press of St. Mary's University, San Antonio.
Clark was born in Big Spring, Texas, and raised in Aldeburgh, England. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Social Psychology and, at the time the book was published, was working towards a master's degree. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines and journals and has appeared in several anthologies. This was her first book.
Brown
I am brown, he tells me, brown it is my brown skin that covers me from rampant waters, it is my skin that defines me carries me to you, and I tell him, I, too, am brown but he does not agree he tells me I am between colours between black and white between negative space & shades of gray I am the absence of colour no term to define me my spectrum is wide from two distant ends papa on one mama on the other I am blended a colour to be measured and mixed I am both black and white becoming brown I tell him that it is my skin that protects me from the sun that carries me across the sand and to the sea it is my colour that blends the land to the sea, the earth to the sky, the sun to the moon I surface in my perfect shade of blended brown through rain weather and sunlight through murk and flower gardens he and I are one in the same varying shades of thick, brown, blended skin.
Bet
graphic artist like the fiesta flamenco dancers dancing cumbias by mariachis tequila gulped warmth of the bottom side worm swallowed whole without regret
you, son of man
you, son of man whose father claimed your dying breathless body after birth
small infant in doctor's care under the hands of God and mother who weeps wildly in the night
her prayers mix with tears and stronghold not to let go to let live to breathe in life
you have no pulse your breathing is no longer rhythmic your chest is collapsed
a last breath before mama carries you with a knitted blanket from the steel bed in which you lay
she carries you out of the cold room through the slick streets
baptizing you with her trail of tears breathing you life inflating breaths filling your body your small balloon belly
she runs faster and further not letting go not giving up
her son, her small son gift from the giver of life and a man who claimed you as half his flesh
she runs, runs, runs
the wind whispering big breaths into your belly
allowing you to live
dance
I saw the peacock dance it was raining he tried to run feathers bundled behind he slipped then started to dance
I grabbed my harmonica and he mooned me bare butt
without feathers

Here's the first of our poems by our featured poet of the week, Amna Tariq Shah.
The Beauty and the Bee Beauty, was as if caged in it, its grace and fragrance like the towered pride of the garden. Sick Rose, Fell in love with the bee! How cruel can love be lets see.
The beauty awaited long for its return, the bee, being late as too much absorbed in its fun.
Whole night the bee would wait in the hope, just for an instant the bee would appear to go.
That moment of oneness was enough, as the beauty lived only for that alone.
Then one day when Eros was being kind, the bee realized how unkind it had been; too lost in the fake world of others, lost completely in the charming world of hemlock drinkers... What it had done!
Ah! The beauty that waited long for its return, no more waited now, not because the beauty changed its love, but the nature had been unkind again all and above.
And this time the beauty was dead, The bee was late and the beauty was dead.

And here's what started out as my first poem of the week but was bumped for Reba, written on a morning I was feeling particularly feisty.
and a good morning to you, too, buckaroo
the Spurs lost to the Lakers last night
i just noticed my vehicle inspection sticker expired a month ago
and Sarah Palin is still gettin' away with it -
on the other hand the sun is shining
bright and fresh and yellow as fresh cream
and a chilled north breeze blows a hint of far mountains
across our modest little hills
and i haven't had a hangover in more than 30 years
so good morning to you, too,
buckaroo -
i'm feeling pretty damn good this morning...
considering

Czeslaw Milosz was born in 1911 in Lithuania. He survived World War II in Warsaw, publishing in the underground press. After the war, he was stationed in New York, Washington D.C. and Paris as cultural attache from Poland. He defected to France in 1951, and, in 1960, accepted a position at the University of California at Berkeley. Even as his work was still banned in Poland, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.
Milosz died in Krakow in 2004.
I have two poems this week from the collection of his work, Selected Poems, 1931-2004, published by HarperCollins in 2004.
Ars Poetica?
I have always aspired to a more spacious form that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose and would let us understand each other without exposing the author or reader to sublime agonies.
In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us, so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out and stood in the light, lashing his tail.
That's why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a diamonion, though it is an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel. It's hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from, when so often they're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.
What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons, who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues, and who, not satisfied with stealing, his lips or hand, work at changing his destiny for their convenience?
It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I've devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.
There was a time when only wise books were read, helping us to bear our pain and misery. This, after all, is not quite the same as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.
And yet the world is different from what if seems to be and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings. People therefore preserve silent integrity, thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry, as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly, under unbearable duress and only with the hope that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
Berkley, 1968
The Song On the End of the World
On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net. Happy porpoises jump in the sea, By the rainspout young sparrows are playing And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
On the day the world ends Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas, A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn, Vegetable peddlers shout in the street And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, The voice of a violin lasts in the air And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder Are disappointed And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps Do not believe it is happening now. As long as the sun and the moon are above, As long as the bumblebee visits a rose, As long as rosy infants are born No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be.
Warsaw, 1944

There the feisty mornings and others, sometimes a little darker.
original sin
several religiosos at the table next to me
a different set than usually have their discussions
here in the morning and i'm overhearing -
life is a closed arc one says, or did he say
life is a closed heart, either way, there is a poem in both
but i can't write it today because today i'm more concerned
about the false spring that's about to burst in on us, little buds
poking their little green heads out from the trees
poor little babies born too soon & soon to die as winter
returns later this week poor little babies
born to die in in the seasonal mysteries
and lies of life as are we all in our day and time
and one of the preachers - the tall white haired one
who looks so much like a Lutheran preacher that there is no way in his life he could be anything else -
he says, men and women are not born evil, the fall
from the garden, he suggests, was not due to some original sin
but development of a knowledge of self, this naked, hairless
human creature who had never known either self or other
suddenly knowing both, and from self-consciousness, self-interest
and ego and positioning of self above all else,
the fall not from some mythical garden but from the universal soul,
becoming one alone and distinct and lonely in its divorce
from the greater all, like the buds, aborning and dying, all part of a greater truth,
while we, the fallen, birth and death on our own,
then, having done our penance of life as ourselves
return from exile to the garden of all undivided

Here, from Amna Tariq Shah, this week's featured poet, a second poem.
The Real Love of a Mother and a Child
That in arms of her slumbers, is no one but a shade of her and all that she remembers. Pangs and pains she saw; for this moment to be in awe. Life has been bestowed by HIM, no wonder; but why is that HE chose her for this can be no blunder. Wrapping her arms around; exhibiting the warmth that heavens bound. The little one smiles to adore O angel figure! who sent you to me bore?
Once again arms in arms they lie, difference being who carries and who sighs. You gave me life, so how is it you say byes? Questioning his tearful eyes. Years and years of his cuddle, now in his lap lies!

Next, I have four short poems by Langston Hughes, from the book, The Dream Keeper and other Poems, published by Knopf in 1994.
I begin with the book's title poem.
The Dream Keeper
Bring me all of your dreams, You dreamers, Bring me all of your Heart melodies That I may wrap them In a blue cloud-cloth Away from the too-rough fingers Of the world.
Negro Dancers
"Me an' ma baby's Got two mo' ways, Two mo' ways to do de Charleston! Da, da, Da, da, da! Two mo' ways to do de Charleston!"
Soft light on the tables, Music gay, Brown-skin steppers In a cabaret.
White folks, laugh! White folks, pray!
"Me an' ma baby's Got two mo' ways, Two mo' ways to do de Charleston!"
Reasons Why
Just because I loves you - That's de reason why Ma soul is full of color Like de wings of a butterfly.
Just because I loves you That's de reason why Ma heart's a fluttering aspen leaf When you pass by.
Night and Morn
Sun's a settin', This is what I'm gonna sing. Sun's a settin', This is what I'm gonna sing: I feels de blues a comin', Wonder what de blues'll bring?
Sun's a risin', This is gonna be my song. Sun's a risin', This is gonna be ma song: I could be blue but I been blue all night long.

Now for another poem from Anma Tariq Shah, our featured poet of the week.
Hope The sunshine that does birth in the blossoms, the light that hath ever shone in the human breast. A reason, it has been to breathe and live, For old years and new, it gloweth the senses. Without, thee, has all in despair and darkness; Thy shall liveth as HOPE.....ALWAYS!

I have some "Here and Now" changes from blogger.com, threatening because I don't know what the hell to do about them. I don't understand the problem and surely don't understand the solution.
I'm hoping to get it fixed before we go down some time in March.
In the meantime, I'm frustrated.
they come from beyond
one of the things i liked about growing up in the 50's
was the fact that things didn't change all that much
once you learned to be a respectably competent citizen of the universe
little retraining was required; if you knew how to do something on Tuesday chances were good that you'd still know how to do it
on Thursday -
it is conspiracy i think - advance scouts from the planet Geekopia
come to earth to screw it all up by making everything so complicated
that they became irreplaceable, while slowly making the rest of us irrelevant and obsolete -
and worst of all it is hard to keep up with these agents of confusion
and catastrophe and today as usual, it find myself
losing -
so if it happens you know one
please transmit via email how i might intrude
upon his fortress of solitude with an urgent request
to fix my computer which has fallen and i don't know how
to get it up

Next, I have several poets from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poets, published in 1988 by HarperCollins.
The first of the poets is Duane Niatum, a member of the Klallam tribe, was born in 1938 in Seattle. His early life was spent in the Northwest and at seventeen he enlisted in the Navy. After spending two years in Japan, he returned to complete his undergraduate studies in english at the University of Washington and later received him M.A. from John Hopkins University. He is known for his short stories and essays in addition to his poetry.
Drawings of the Song Animals
I
Treefrog winks without springing from its elderberry hideaway. Before the day is buried in dusk I will trust the crumbling earth.
II
Foghorns, the bleached absence of the Cascade and Olympic mountains. The bay sleeps in a shell of haze. Anchorless as the night, the blue-winged teal dredges for the moon.
III
thistle plumed, a raccoon pillages my garbage. When did we plug its nose with concrete? Whose eyes lie embedded in chemicals?
IV
Dams abridge the Columbia Basin. On the rim of a rotting barrel, a crow. The imperishable remains of a cedar man's salmon trap.
V
Deer crossing the freeway - don't graze near us, don't trust our signs. We hold your ears in our teeth, your hoofs on our dashboards.
VI
Shells, gravel musings from the deep, dwellings from the labyrinth of worms. Crabs crawl sideways into another layer of dark.
VII
Bumblebee, a husk of winter and the wind. I will dance in your field if the void is in bloom.
VIII
A lizard appears, startled by my basket of blackberries. In the white of the afternoon we are lost to the stream. Forty years to unmask the soul!
The next poem is by Louis (Little Coon) Oliver.
Oliver is a Creek Indian born in 1904 in Oklahoma and, a descendant of the Golden Raccoon Clan, can trace her lineage to Indian Clans who lived along the Chattahoche river in Alabama. She died in 1991.
Empty Kettle
I do not waste what is wild I only take what my cup can hold. When the black kettle gapes empty and children eat roasted acorns only, it is time to rise-up early take no drink - eat no food sing the song of the hunter. I see the Buck - I chant: "He-hebah-Ahk-kay-kee-no!" My arrow, no woman has ever touched, finds its mark. I open the way for the blood to pour back to Mother Earth the debt I owe. My soul rises - rapturous and I sing a different song, I sing, I sing.
And finally, from Harper's Native American anthology, I have this poem by Lance Henson.
Henson, a Cheyenne, was born in 1944 and raised in Oklahoma and is currently the poet-in-residence for more than 300 schools in several states. Author of six books of poetry, he was the first Native American to translate a major collection from Cheyenne to English.
near twelve mile point
for my grandparents
at times the heart looks toward open fields and sees itself returning
orange pall of sun the low hymn of trees
in the garden a north wind blows over dry stalks of corn birds gather there scratching over the echoing footsteps
your names have become the dark feather
to whom the stars sing
The Midnight Lamp The midnight lamp kept burning silently its quiet fire narrated some tales
Unattended, were some of them...still thus ignored went this burning sacrifice to them
The lamp held in it thousands of stories and it kept talking to only a few
Then came the gush of wind from nowhere And there it stood all burnt
The midnight lamp was no more but the brightness was more than it ever bore

Here's another report from another well-started day.
walking with my dog on a new-bright day
walking with my dog in a new-bright day
that's the way to start a morning - pushing back
against the night storms and all the pickle-sour clouds
of the day before -
and that be me walking with Reba in my coat and gloves
sucking up the cool and the sunshine and the fresh air never
been shined on before
and i'm rounding the corner and see Old John driving up
in his wife's Lexus and I know it be his wife's cause he's driving real slow
and cautious
like he never drives his own old Jeep, like a 15-year-old that's how he drives
his own old Jeep and i can hear his wife saying you don't be driving my Lexus
like you be driving your own old Jeep
or else - that's probably what she said but Old John won't admit it
says he always drives that way but i know better having observed from anear and afar
all his automotive like he wasn't paying for the insurance high-jinks
and speaking
of beautiful days i think i might be calling Dee
about using this beautiful day for a country drive to Fred-town -
maybe stop off and steal some rocks
at the quarry along the way - she be working hard at her office this Saturday morning
making the money to keep me fed and she could probably use a break
just like mine

Here again, featured poet Amna Tariq Shah.
The Midnight Lamp The midnight lamp kept burning silently its quiet fire narrated some tales
Unattended, were some of them...still thus ignored went this burning sacrifice to them
The lamp held in it thousands of stories and it kept talking to only a few
Then came the gush of wind from nowhere And there it stood all burnt
The midnight lamp was no more but the brightness was more than it ever bore

Next I have three poems from Coleman Barks, one of my favorite poets. The poems are from his book, Gourd Seed, published by Maypop Books in 1993.
Barks published his first book in 1972. Though he has continued to publish his own work, from the late seventies to the present he has been primarily known for his interpretations of the 13th century mystic, Jelauddin Rumi.
Easter Morning, 1992
A bright copper and brown striped lizard, big for this area, seven inches long, has taken over my mop drying on the back fence. Here four hours, bent over like some clearly crazed old man humping the back of the head of his goddess, his goddess who has only the back of a head all round. Not that there's pelvic motion, but he looks tranced, the perfect five-fingered hands spread for pleasure and grip. He neverminds my face so near, nor I his. It may not look like love but it is that that keeps us in this head over head over head, eons.
An Up Till Now Uncelebrated Joy
There's one book, a 1988 volume, and it's here, never been checked out, and flipping through, I sniff the carefulness, the guarded assertions this Oxford guy spent twelve years considering, so that now I can have the rest of a Spring afternoon finding out what's been known and what will remain secret a while longer about the Sixth Dalai Lama.
Good scholarship gives me such delight that I kiss the book alone in the stacks, and I almost kiss the checkout girl, and I savor the length of the Bibliography walking through the self-opening double doors, and I skip going back to my truck, because Michael Aris has sustained his interest in Tibetan mystics, and I want to kiss the bald pate of research like a n'er-do-well daughter going out on a date, who before leaving, thoughtfully brings some green tea for a little break.
Fixing the Door
Fixing the bathroom door would require taking it off and planing two sides the floodwater has swollen so that it will close only with a definite effort and sometimes springs open to reveal a sweetheart shitting or myself to whoever's standing by the refrigerator looking in the way we will when we're not hungry for anything, just checking as we do when any door opens of its own volition...First, I'd have to buy a plane.

And now, our last poem from featured poet, Amna Tariq Shah.
Thank you Aman. With best wishes for your continue success as a writer. We hope we might hear from you again.
An Outcast
From tree to tree the eagle flies, In quest of warmth, to stay by. The fire flickers a distance away, But it is nothing when the bird comes array. Swooping high, it holds its breath; Thinking twice, when it just once had to think. Not in proximity to life; It wonders to see a better day ahead. The bird breaks its wings; This was the only hope to keep it within the ring. Sensing joys and sorrows are a part of existence, It continues now by search through walk in the smooth ocean.

OK, so this next poem is not so nice. But it's true for most of us - kinda.
pure as the driven snow, again
a good thing about getting old
if you survive it
is that as the years pass
more and more of the people you wronged
die off, allowing remorse
for past sins with no requirement for restitution -
and how our virtue increases as each new death and new year's passing
makes it easier and easier to be the example
of rectitude old folks
are supposed to be - meanwhile, my birthday
next week takes me to number 66
and i'm thinking 4 or 5 more
and i'll be pure as the driven snow,
again

Now I have a poem by Lorna Dee Cervantes, another of my favorites. The poems are from her book Emplumada, which, as you might guess from the root "pluma," means "feathered." The book was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press and was winner of the 1982 American Book Award.
Born in San Francisco in 1954, Cervantes is of Hispanic-Native American heritage. She grew up in San Jose, speaking English exclusively because of her parents who had a strictly enforced English-only rule at home. Currently a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, she has been described as "probably the best Chicana poet active today."
Uncle's First Rabbit
He was a good boy making his way through the Santa Barbara pines, sighting the blast of fluff as he leveled the rifle, and the terrible singing began. He was ten years old, hunting my grandpa's supper. He had dreamed of running, shouldering the rifle to town, selling it, and taking the next train out. Fifty years have passed and he still hears that rabbit "just like a baby." He remembers how the rabbit stopped keening under the butt of his rifle, how he brought it home with tears streaming down his blood soaked jacket. "That bastard. That bastard." He cried all night and the week after, remembering that voice like his dead baby sister's, remember his father's drunken kicking that had pushed her into birth. She had a voice like that, growing faint at its end; his mother rocking, softly, keening. He dreamed of running, running the bastard out of his life. He would forget them, run down the hill, leave his mother's silent waters, and the sounds of beating night after night. When war came he took the man's vow. He was finally leaving and taking the bastard's last bloodline with him. At war's end he could still hear her, her soft body stiffening under water like a shark's. The color of rthe water, darkening, soaking, as he clung to what was left of a ship's gun. Ten long hours off the coast of Okinawa, he sang so he wouldn't hear them. He pounded their voices out of his head, and awakened to find himself slugging the bloodied face of his wife. Fifty years have passed and he has not run the way he dreamed. The Paradise pines shadow the bleak hills to his home. His hunting hounds, dead now. His father, long dead. His wife, dying, hacking in the bed she has not let him enter for the last thirty years. He stands looking, he mouths the words, "Die you bitch. I'll live to watch you die." He turns, entering their moss-soft livingroom. He watches the picture window and remembers running: how he'll take the new pickup to town, sell it, and get the next train out.

Here's a little exploration of stupidity, my own and others' as well.
stupid is
i've done some stupid things in my life and
even knowing they were stupid i did them anyway
cause i didn't know how to stop -
that leaves me with, perhaps, more compassion
for adulterers and drunks and chiselers
and all the standard ne'r-do-wells
that populate our lives and the morning newspapers -
it's just a bunch of stupid things they did
cause they didn't know how to stop,
is the way i think about it, though i lose my patience pretty quick
when, after getting away with stupid for a while
they begin to thinking they don't need to stop,
thinking all their adultering and stealing and whatnot was
just fine cause they were so special and the rules
don't apply to them and if they did it
it couldn't be stupid anyway
and at that point we're past stupid and into
delusion requiring intervention
which they never see coming, the stupidest part
of the stupid things they do cause they should'a known
everyone always gets caught in the end

So, from where ever I am, that's it for the week. I'll be back next week, though from where is even more confusing than the same question next week. I can narrow it down to California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas, one of those places, or, maybe some place else, like, maybe, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, or Utah. From what ever local that turns out to be I’ll have all sorts of stuff, including a new featured poet, Derek Richards, with some of his great poems for you.
In the meantime, all is as before. The material presented here remains the property of those who created it. Such stuff of mine as someone might want is available to whoever wants it, all for the very reasonable cost of telling people where you got it.
I remain, in any of those places mentioned earlier, allen itz, owner and producer of this blog.
(It turns out I am behind schedule - I had intended to be somewhere in Arizona by tonight, but ended up instead in Gallup, New Mexico. I'll tell you about it next week in my travel poem issue of "Here and Now.")
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