The Purse-Seine

Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark

      of the moon; daylight or moonlight

They could not tell where to spread the net,

       unable to see the phosphorescence of the

       shoals of fish.

They work northward from Monterey, coasting

       Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off

       Pigeon Point

The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color

       light on the sea's night-purple; he points,

       and the helmsman

Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the

       gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.

       They close the circle

And purse the bottom of the net, then with great

       labor haul it in.

                                     I cannot tell you

How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,

       then, when the crowded fish

Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall

       to the other of their closing destiny the

       phosphorescent

Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body

       sheeted with flame, like a live rocket

A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside

       the narrowing

Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up

       to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls

       of night

Stand erect to the stars.

                               Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top

On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:

       how could I help but recall the seine-net

Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how

       beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.

I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together

       into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now

There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable

       of free survival, insulated

From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all

       dependent. The circle is closed, and the net

Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet

       they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters

Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we

       and our children

Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all

       powers—or revolution, and the new government

Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls—or anarchy,

       the mass-disasters.

                                      These things are Progress;

Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps

       its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow

In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria,

       splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are

       quite wrong.

There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew

       that cultures decay, and life's end is death.