Welcome back to the daily poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Donald Justice.

He was born on August 12, 1925, and that makes today his birthday.

He was an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980.

He also received the Lann and Literary Award for Poetry in 1996 and several other awards.

He was a grant winner from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation,

and the National Endowment for the Arts.

He died in 2004 at the age of 78.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called,

There is a Gold Light in Certain Old Paintings. Goes like this.

There is a gold light in certain old paintings that represents a diffusion of sunlight.

It is like happiness when we are happy. It comes from everywhere and from nowhere at

once this light, and the poor soldiers sprawled at the foot of the cross share in its charity equally

with the cross. Two, Orpheus hesitated beside the Black River. With so much to look forward to, he looked back.

We think he sang then, but the song is lost.

At least he had seen once more the beloved back.

I say the song went this way.

Oh, prolong now the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong.

Three.

The world is very dusty, uncle. Let us work.

One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good.

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