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    • June 2013
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Does the butterfat know it is butterfat,

milk know it’s milk?

No.

Something just goes and something remains.

Like a boardinghouse table:

men on one side, women on the other.

Nobody planned it.

Plaid shirts next to one another,

talking in accents from the Midwest.

Nobody plans to be a ghost.

Later on, the young people sit in the kitchen.

Soon enough, they’ll be the ones

to stumble Excuse me and quickly withdraw.

But they don’t know that.

No one can ever know that.

Source: Poetry (September 2012).

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MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

This poem originally appeared in the September 2012 issue of Poetry magazine

• Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain
  by Jane Hirshfield
• The Grind
  by Ange Mlinko
• Jessica Greenbaum Responds
  by Jessica Greenbaum

• September 2012 Table of Contents
• Subscribe to Poetry magazine
• About Poetry magazine
• Buy This Issue

More about this poem

Biography

Award-winning poet, essayist, and translator Jane Hirshfield is the author of several collections of verse, including Come, Thief (2011), After (2006), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize, and Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, among others. Hirshfield has also translated the work of early women poets in collections such as The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi . . .

Continue reading this biography

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Poems by Jane Hirshfield

• A Blessing for Wedding
• A Chair in Snow
• All the Difficult Hours and Minutes
• An hour is not a house
• Fado

• More poems by Jane Hirshfield (27 poems)
  • For What Binds Us
  • Green-Striped Melons
  • Heat
  • I sat in the sun
  • Like the Small Hole by the Path-Side Something Lives in
  • Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain
  • Mathematics
  • My Weather
  • Once, I
  • Perishable, It Said
  • Rebus
  • Seawater Stiffens Cloth
  • Sentencings
  • Sonoma Fire
  • The Decision
  • The Envoy
  • The Heat of Autumn
  • The Pear
  • The Promise
  • The Woodpecker Keeps Returning
  • To Judgment: An Assay
  • Tree

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Poem Categorization

SUBJECT Living, Death, Growing Old, Life Choices, The Mind, Time & Brevity, Youth, Relationships, Men & Women

Poetic Terms Free Verse

If you disagree with this poem's categorization, make a suggestion.

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Related

Audio

• Poem of the Day: All the Difficult Hours and Minutes
• Poetry Off the Shelf: All Too Human
• Poem of the Day: A Cedary Fragrance
• Poetry Radio Project: "Cook" by Jane Hirshfield
• Poem of the Day: The Envoy
• Poem of the Day: Heat
• Poem of the Day: The Heat of Autumn
• Poem of the Day: It Was Like This
• Poetry Off the Shelf: Jane Hirshfield
• Poem of the Day: Of: An Assay
• Poem of the Day: The Pear
• Poetry Radio Project: Poetry + Mahler
• Poetry Off the Shelf: Romancing the Pork
• Poem of the Day: To Judgment: An Assay
• Poem of the Day: Tree
• The Poetry Magazine Podcast: Wild Bard—or Professional?
• Poem of the Day: The Woodpecker Keeps Returning

Video

• For What Binds Us
• The Heat of Autumn

Articles

• Eight Takes: Clover, Karr, Gregg, O'Callaghan, Bricuth, Jones, Hirshfield, Heaney by Dan Chiasson
• Kitchen Ants and Everyday Epiphanies by Cynthia Haven
• Spiritual Poetry by Jane Hirshfield

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