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What poem begins with each thing I do rush through so can start something else?

The poem that begins with each thing I do rush through so I can start something else is "The Hurry's Too Great" by William Stafford.

Here is the full poem:

**Each Thing I Do Rush Through

So I Can Start Something Else**

There is an art of this life that must

be made in the midst. When all

the details must come out sharp at first.

No blurred edges on our work -

or even an inkling

of a blurry edge: all the parts together

making a form we can handle

as if it really belonged to somebody who

could look right back where they had always known

it really came from in their hands. All our work

seems in some ways to turn

on the axis between a wish to keep doing

and another to stop now and know what we may have.

So it may take time even just to hurry in the right way. That may

be the first great mystery at heart: whether there can, indeed,

be such hurrying at all to keep from hurrying and to live a long time

all at once with artfulness that knows

the whole way. In any case a person

has one great life only to create - and to let others

be as creative as we were: this life - in this only and once lived-in hour.

Poetry

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