Cedars and the westward sun.
The darkening sky.
A man
Watches beside the fallen
The evening multitudes of
Crowd in upon us all.
For when the light fails they
Nocturnal sabotage
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
Scandal and index to their time,
It is that twilight brings for
The faculty of crime.
Only the idiot and the
Stand by, while who were young
Wage insolent and guilty
By night within that ancient house,
Immense, black, damned, anonymous.