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AT DARIEN BRIDGE The sea here used to look As if many convicts had built it, Standing deep in their ankle chains, Ankle-deep in the water, to smite The land and break it down to salt. I was in this bog as a child When they were all working all day To drive the pilings down. I thought I saw the still sun Strike the side of a hammer in flight And from it a sea bird be born To take off over the marshes. As the gray climbs the side of my head And cuts my brain off from the world, I walk and wish mainly for birds, For the one bird no one has looked for To spring again from a flash Of metal, perhaps from the scratched Wedding band on my ring finger. Recalling the chains of their feet, I stand and look out over grasses At the bridge they built, long abandoned, Breaking down into water at last, And long, like them, for freedom Or death, or to believe again That they worked on the ocean to give it Helmets 117 The unchanging, hopeless look Out of which all miracles leap. 118 ...

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