A Night-Piece
© copyright 1920 Thomas Burke
I climbed the other day up to the roof
Of the commanding and palatial Home for Asiatics
And looked across the city at the hour of no-light.

Across great space of dark I looked,
But the skirt of darkness had a hundred rents,
Made by the lights of many people's homes.

My life is a great skirt of darkness,
But human kindliness has torn it through,
So that it shows ten thousand gaping rents
Where the light comes in.
 

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