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The New Yorker
Poems
July 25, 2011 Issue

On the Nature of Understanding

By Kay Ryan

July 18, 2011
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Say you hoped to
tame something
wild and stayed
calm and inched up
day by day. Or even
not tame it but
meet it halfway.
Things went along.
You made progress,
understanding
it would be a
lengthy process,
sensing changes
in your hair and
nails. So it’s
strange when it
attacks: you thought
you had a deal.

Published in the print edition of the July 25, 2011, issue.
More:HairThinking

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