The One Turn That Makes the New World Poem by Sophie Cabot Black

Maybe the light from a small window
Tucked at the utmost eave of the barn
Could be misunderstood; if only I had pulled

In by the other way or not looked up
Against such darkness. The animal I brought
Into this no longer mine, the task

Each day was to confine enough, from harm
Or from each other as night loosens
Over the assemblage. But in the pasture

One wrong step was taken. And those who remain
Are weary, heads low, torment nowhere
To be seen, not even in the illumination

Of men who have come to help,
Who behind the double doors keep watch
By the body so it does not become

Anything for those who scavenge, to follow back
The acts of blood right up to the locked stall
And light where each shaft lands precisely again

Through the again. The horse was in the snow,
The rock was underfoot; all the unknowables
Made whole and apparent by one who stumbled.