I have always known all this, it has always been,
There is no change anywhere, nothing will ever change.
I heard a story, a crazy and tiresome myth.
Listen! behind the twilight a deep low sound
Like the constant shutting of very distant doors,
Doors that are letting people over there
Out to some other place beyond the end of the sky.
SONNET
There was an Indian, who had known no change,
Who strayed content along a sunlit beach
Gathering shells. He heard a sudden strange
Commingled noise; looked up; and gasped for speech.
For in the bay, where nothing was before,
Moved on the sea, by magic, huge canoes,
With bellying cloths on poles, and not one oar,
And fluttering coloured signs and clambering crews.
And he, in fear, this naked man alone,
His fallen hands forgetting all their shells,
His lips gone pale, knelt low behind a stone,
And stared, and saw, and did not understand,
Columbus's doom-burdened caravels
Slant to the shore, and all their seamen land.