War is its own peace. The sea its own shore.
These temporary reassurances
Beneath the moon, deciphering old code
Re-sent from satellites smearing deep space:
The night, the night, the night, the night, the night.
There are those things never done nor begun,
But glimpsed by the poem of experience
In something begun and yet never done;
As a Phoenix without its fire is
Still a Phoenix, still reborn and then born
Again beneath the boot-stomped kindling, thrashed
Then risen from blue cities under siege
In that long winter of MMXXVI,
When gunked ice scummed the streets, dumb as poured stone.
Copyright © 2026 by Rowan Ricardo Phillips. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 19, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
