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The woman who was small not
because the world expanded.

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The elephants came
out from the fields

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and carried me toward Chambak,
toward a village doused

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in fires so that in the
pond fish had fried,

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and looking at
that dead water was

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a woman I had seen
running home each evening

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with a bucket in her hand.

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Always her speed was the
hair that flew in my face.

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Always her feet
sounding of tanks

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which made dogs bark and
flee, footprints deep

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as trenches in the grass.

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This is the woman who has shrunk
so small when the planes came

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nobody could ever find
her, and since more planes,

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she stayed as small as a spoon.

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And the world seemed to enlarge
though nothing had changed,

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and when she saw me she hid,
threw pebbles at my ankles

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until I bowed down and
easily picked her up,

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folding her inside
a banana leaf.

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She slept.

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She slept well.

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She, who is my mother,
sleeping off the world again,

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whose person I hold in my hand
when she wants to be held.

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