WEBVTT

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This book is in sections.

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That poem is the bridge.

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It's the last poem in the
section of natural world poems,

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and it leads into a
section of love poems.

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I'm going to skip the wonderful
beginning, the fabulous heights,

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the ecstatic climax, and take
you to the end of the love poems

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as so many good things will--

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it ended.

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For What Binds Us.

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There are names
for what binds us--

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strong forces, weak forces.

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Look around.

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You can see them.

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The skin that forms in a
half empty cup, nails rusting

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into the places
they join, joints

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dovetailed on their own weight.

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The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down.

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And gravity, scientists
say, is weak.

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And see how the flesh
grows back across a wound

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with a great vehemence, more
strong than the simple, untested

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surface before.

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There's a name for
it on horses when it

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comes back darker and raised--

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proud flesh, as all flesh
is proud of its wounds,

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wears them as honors given out
after battle, small triumphs

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pinned to the chest.

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And when two people
have loved each other,

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see how it is like a scar
between their bodies--

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stronger, darker, and
proud, how the black cord

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makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

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