The Curse

Cedars and the westward sun.

The darkening sky. A man alone

Watches beside the fallen wall

The evening multitudes of sin

Crowd in upon us all.

For when the light fails they begin

Nocturnal sabotage among

The outcast and the loose of tongue,

The lax in walk, the murderers:

Our twilight universal curse.

Children are faultless in the wood,

Untouched. If they are later made

Scandal and index to their time,

It is that twilight brings for bread

The faculty of crime.

Only the idiot and the dead

Stand by, while who were young before

Wage insolent and guilty war

By night within that ancient house,

Immense, black, damned, anonymous.