The Great Sunset

A flight of six heavy-motored bombing-planes Went over the beautiful inhuman ridges a straight course northward; the incident stuck itself in my memory More than a flight of band-tail pigeons might have done Because those wings of man and potential war seemed really intrusive above the remote canyon. They changed it; I cannot say they profaned it, but the memory All day remained like a false note in familiar music, and suggested no doubt The counter-fantasy that came to my eyes in the evening, on the ocean cliff. I came from the canyon twilight Exactly at sunset to the open shore, and felt like a sudden extension of consciousness the wild free light And biting north-wind. The cloud-sky had lifted from the western horizon and left a long yellow panel Between the slate-edge ocean and the eyelid cloud; the smoky ball of the sun rolled on the sea-line And formless bits of vapor flew across, but when the sun was down The panel of clear sky brightened, the rags of moving cloud took memorable shapes, dark on the light, Whether I was dreaming or not, they became spears and war-axes, horses and sabres, gaunt battle-elephants With towered backs; they became catapults and siege-guns, high-tilted howitzers, long tractors, armored and turreted; They became battleships and destroyers, and great fleets of warplanes ... all the proud instruments Of man imposing his will upon weaker men: they were like a Roman triumph, but themselves the captives, A triumph in reverse: all the tools of victory Whiffed away on the north-wind into a cloud like a conflagration, swept from the earth, no man From this time on to exploit nor subdue any other man. I thought, 'What a pity our kindest dreams Are complete liars,' and turned from the glowing west toward the cold twilight. 'To be truth-bound, the neutral Detested by all the dreaming factions, is my errand here.'