WEBVTT

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The companion poem
to that, "17,"

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shows him coming down
from the mountain.

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See how carefully
worked out those two.

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He goes up in the first poem,
he comes down in the next one.

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"I am down at last
from the mountain,

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having confessed, without words,
that height is not everything.

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Not that I did not
enjoy the rare air,

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the oversides of birds.

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Not that I did not applaud the
dark clouds' silver linings.

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And of course, all
that splendid symmetry.

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Merciful God, did you know that
even the meanest water gully

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winds its course,
cocksure as a headstone?

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But height is not everything.

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Thus, I am down now
from the mountain,

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gulping the dense air, dodging
the droppings of kingbirds.

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Lightning, I tell
my vast audiences,

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strikes only once, and
always in the same place.

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At unmarked creeks, I
don a faded loincloth,

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then dive like a
deep-eyed urchin,

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again and again and again, for
the spent coins of belief."

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