Hello and welcome to the Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, filling in for David Kern, and today is Monday,

September 28th. I'm sure you all have missed David's voice regularly on the Daily Poem. David is in the

middle of a move, actually. He and his family have moved this weekend and are settling into their new home and there's lots of new

endeavors and exciting things going on in the Kern family. And so I've been filling in for David

a few times to give him some space to focus on that. Send your thoughts and prayers his way,

of course, and he will be back regularly on the daily poem just as soon as he can.

So today I'm going to read for you a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. She lived from 1917 to 2000,

and she's one of the most influential and important mid-20th century American voices in poetry.

Gwendolyn Brooks was the first black author to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first black woman

to serve as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.

She also served as Poet Laureate of the State of Illinois and wrote a prolific canon of important American verse.

And today's poem is called A Sunset of the City, and this is how it goes.

Already, I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.

My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles

and dolls, are gone from the house. My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite,

and night is night. It is a real chill out, the genuine thing. I am not deceived. I do not think it is still summer because

sun stays and birds continue to sing. It is summer gone that I see. It is summer gone.

The sweet flowers in drying and dying down, the grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting

to brown. It is a real chill out. The fall

crisp comes. I am aware there is winter to heed. There is no warm house that is fitted with my need.

I am cold in this cold house, this house whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls. I am a woman

and dusty, standing among new affairs. I'm a woman who hurries through her prayers. Ten intimations

...