Ninety-Six
I placed the skull on a stump, saying, "There. Now you can see better."
Knowing this was not so, and, shamed, I stayed an hour, seeing for the deer.
The speaker has found a deer’s skull and lifts it onto a stump, offering a small, almost conversational gesture: “now you can see better.” Almost at once, they admit the words are false—the deer sees nothing—and that admission brings shame. The rest of the poem turns on that shame.
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