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In this narrow passage I must appear as large
As possible, arms uplifted into what might
Be thought of as god and the idea of how
To get past even this without being killed,
Taken away, for somewhere in the act of want
Is being wanted, and we move
Over the frozen ground in the presumption
One of us will suffer and only one of us will be
Exact enough, which is why I came alone,
Following a creek back up its last place
To see how far I could go, with the raven
Who will not end his circle, the wind as it
Turns through a gnarl of bristlecone. We were
Never meant to be this close and to survive.
Sophie Cabot Black is author of The Misunderstanding of Nature and The Descent. Her poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Poetry.
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