If I gave 5 birds <br />each 4 eyes <br />I would be blind <br />unto the 3rd <br />generation, if I <br />gave no one a word <br />for a day <br />and let the day <br />grow into a week <br />and the week sleep <br />until it was <br />half of my life <br />could I come home <br />to my father <br />one dark night? <br /> <br />On Sundays an odd light <br />grows on the bed <br />where I have lived <br />this half of my life <br />alight that begins <br />with the eyes <br />blinding first one <br />and then both <br />until at last <br />even the worn candles <br />in the flower box <br />lay down their heads. <br /> <br />Therefore I have come <br />to this red shirt <br />with its faultless row <br />of dark buttons, 7 <br />by my count, as dark <br />as blood that poured <br />over my lips <br />when the first word <br />of hope jumped <br />and became a cry <br />of birds calling <br />for their wings, <br />a cry of new birds. <br /> <br />This is the red shirt <br />Adam gave to the Angel <br />of Death when he asked <br />for a son, this <br />is the flag Moses <br />waved 5 times <br />above his head <br />as he stumbled <br />down the waves <br />of the mountainous sea <br />bearing the Tables of 10, <br />this is the small cloth <br />mother put in <br />my lunch box <br />with bread and water. <br /> <br />This is my red shirt <br />in which I go to meet <br />you, Father of the Sea, <br />in which I will say <br />the poem I learned <br />from the mice. A row <br />of faultless buttons, <br />each one 10 years <br />and the eye of the bird <br />that beheld the first world <br />and the last, a field <br />of great rocks weeping, <br />and no one to see <br />me alone, day after <br />day, in my red shirt.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-red-shirt/
