A Sunset

THE old Quarry, Sun, with bleeding scales,
Flaps up the gullies, wets their crystal pebbles,
Floating with waters of gold; darkness exhales
Brutishly in the valley; smoke rises in bubbles;
Suddenly we stop at the meeting of two trails.
"Do you remember?"
"But now everything is changed-
Trees ringed with death, the creek with its bells clanking
Dried like white bone." Even our voices are estranged.
Darkness chokes the river; so nearly what I am thinking
It echoes, the whole thing might have been arranged!