MMXXVI
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.
“‘MMXXVI’ grew out of the feeling that the events of a single year could no longer be separated into headlines, private life, or history. Its recursive structure emerged from that pressure: repetition, interruption, and return all felt truer to the experience than narrative or argument. The poem is less a commentary on its moment than an attempt to inhabit it.”
—Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Born in New York City in 1974, Rowan Ricardo Phillips earned his BA at Swarthmore College and his PhD at Brown University.