Real and Half Real
It was a time to find a new world: who was sent forth?
Columbus, that is the dove, Noah's dove
Over wide waters. It was time (men having so long
so vainly envied the birds) it was time to realize
That ancient dream: and who were appointed? Two
brothers, surnamed Wright, (that's maker, artificer)
Launch their contrivance--where?--on the field of the
hawk, Kittyhawk, the mewing hawk.
These are the two great turnings
In a thousand years: you notice how the names mark
them: to you see Myth
Leaning tall from her darkness over the shoulder of
History, guiding
The hand that writes? A dove discovers new lands; a
legendary artificer, doubled to symbolize
Importance, invents the plane.
Or again: consider the dates of the earlier
world-war. It became world-war
The day America entered: what was that day? A
most appropriate day, a so-called Good Friday,
The day of the death of Christ. And then it ended,
not quite too late, and its armistice
Is dated the eleventh hour, underscored by eleventh
Day and month: a grim bit of humor, trivial but omi-
nous. --And now we return to complete the
twelfth--
The man who is chosen to crack the iron shell of Europe:
what is is name? --Iron-hewer.
There seems to be something
Intentional in these coincidences. Perhaps they are
token
That what makes history is not the actors; men's minds
and clashing causes are not the cause. The play--
As Hardy, Tolstoy, Sophocles knew--is authored
Outside the scene. Invisible wires are pulled, the pas-
sionate puppets gesticulate, Napoleon, Oedipus
And Hitler perform their pre-formed agonies.
But now consider
Something not human:--here the coast hills at Sobe-
ranes Creek sea-mouth, sleep wedges and cones of
granite
Thin-skinned with grass; their feet are deep in the flood-
tide ocean, dark, heavy and still, calm in this trough
Between two storms; their heads are against the dark
heavy sky. No life is visible but the bright grass,
And a gang of wild pigs, huddled flank-to-flank,
flowing up a swale
On the far slope; and that one eagle, wheeling and rock-
ing, high and alone
Against the cloud-lid.
Here are not trivial artist-signatures, no puppet-
play, no pretence of free will;
This is first-class reality. The human affair is half real,
part myth, part art-work: this is in earnest.
I conclude
That men should play the parts assigned to them and do it
bravely, emulating
The nobility of nature, but well in mind
That their play is a play; it is serious but not important;
what's done in earnest is done outside it.
- Robinson Jeffers (American poet, 1887-1962)
