"The Astonishing Beauty of Things"

The Purse Seine

   ~ Robinson Jeffers

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 interdependence; 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, splin-

      tered 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.

1937

Following is a French film.  It really doesn't matter what the translation is, the language of tiny secretive creatures hidden in a meadow is universal, as is the incredibly declicate and diverse complexity.  The vibrant clarity of cinematography is far better quality in this original version than the English.  In this time of our culture's decay, before life's end, we would do well to stop now and then to remember what the poet Jeffers referred to as the astonishing beauty of things.