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"Possibility: An Assay"

By Jane HirshfieldPosted Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005, at 9:08 AM ET

Listen to Jane Hirshfield reading this poem.

Again I looked out the window.
All around me, the morning still dark.

The mountain's outline there, but not the mountain.

Then a neighbor's facing plate-glass filled
with the colors, acute and tender, of a Flemish painting.
Corals, blues.

Which seemed to be a preview of the future but were,
I knew,
this moment simply looking elsewhere,
like a woman who has wept for weeks who realizes
that she is also hungry.

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Jane Hirshfield's sixth book of poetry, After, was named a "best book of 2006" by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Financial Times.

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