WHAT ARE WE MARKING?
Right now the sky is lowering, the darkness
encroaches; the old brick wall seems to shudder
on its own. Wallabout Bay, it's really called that,
takes it seam and closes old Brooklyn down.
The ghosts of 500 ships sit fallow. The old
Navy Yard, or its site, withers in evening's glow.
-
Far about, some peasant sailors with red ribbons
on their caps play games with sticks, whittling
their minds with those ironical caps and feints.
They jumble ship, rocking in the sway, sits
lordly atop and within the oiled waters.
-
This is a time of the ages of Man : we often
see so little of it that we have it pass us by
without even knowing what we've lost. A
hundred thousand men, traumatized and
bullet-holed, have died so this could live?
And now, b'gosh, they say, it too is lost.
I no longer know where to turn.
I watch, instead, the setting sun.
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