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Now

for how many years have you gone
through the house shutting the windows,
while the rain was still five miles away
and veering, o plum-colored clouds,
to the north away from you
and you did not even know enough
to be sorry, you were glad those
silver sheets, with the occasional golden staple,
were sweeping on, elsewhere,
violent and electric and uncontrollable--
and will you find yourself finally wanting
to forget all enclosures, including
the enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf,
and will you dash finally, frantically,
to the windows and haul them open
and lean out to the dark, silvered sky,
to everything that is beyond capture,
shouting i'm here, i'm here!
now, now, now, now, now.

Mary Oliver