“July”
You poets of the Late T’ang send me messages this morning.
The eastern sky is streaked with red.
Linkages of bird song make a floating chain.
In a corner of the world, walled in by ocean and sky,
I can look back on so many destructive days and nights,
and forward too, ego demons as far as mind reaches.
Here, for a moment, the light holds.
–Harvey Shapiro
from The Sights Along the Harbor: New & Collected Poems
