Moonlight Alert
(Los Altos, California, June 1943)
The Sirens, rising, woke me; and the night
Lay cold and windless; and the moon was bright,
Moonlight from sky to earth, untaught, unclaimed,
An icy nightmare of the brute unnamed.
This was hallucination. Scarlet flower
And yellow fruit hung colorless. That hour
No scent lay on the air. The siren scream
Took on the fixity of shallow dream.
In the dead sweetness I could see the fall,
Like petals sifting from a quiet wall,
of yellow soldiers through indifferent air,
Falling to die in solitude. With care
I held this vision, thinking of young men
Whom I had known, and should not see again,
Fixed in reality, as I in thought.
And I stood waiting, and encountered naught.
~~
Yvor Winters (1900-1968)
from Poetry, November 1944
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
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