America has so many roads—
On every road, someone lost. 
And should we be sorry for the girls
Who will go into labor nine months from tonight?

Should we be sorry for being born
Americans? Here, lost at the crossroads,
Trying to find our place on the map.
So many towns, so many little stars...

America has surrounded us.
And the poems that fell from our mouths
Like stars in August—
Look for them in the Pacific.


Donald Justice was an American poet and professor. He won the Lamont Poetry Prize for his debut collection Summer Anniversaries in 1961, the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1980 for his Selected Poems, and the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1991. He was as well the recipient of grants in poetry from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.