A Sunset by Robert Hass

A Sunset 

The sky tonight on the top of the ridge

Was bruise-colored, a yellow-brown

That is one definition of the word “sordid,”

Which, I think, used to describe

That color, carries neither a moral

Nor an aesthetic judgment. The sky

At dusk was sordid and then brightened

And softened to a glowing peach

Of brief but astonishing beauty,

If you happened to be paying attention.

I could take a hard right here

To the angry adolescent boy in Texas

Who shot and killed nineteen children

With a high-powered weapon my culture

Put into his hands. How to enter

The hive of that mind and undo what

The imagination had done there?

He wore a flak jacket, bought two rifles

At a local store, one of which fires forty rounds

A minute. He had it specifically in mind

To kill children of that age, the lithe-

Bodied young in their end-of-term clothing.

The connective tissue in this veering

Is the idea that it is the experience of beauty,

Not rules, not fear of consequences

Or reverence for authority, that informs

Our moral sense. This may be where

John Ashbery would introduce a non sequitur,

Not from aversion to responsibility

But from a sense he no doubt had

That there was a kind of self-importance

In the introduction of morality to poetry

And that one might, therefore, be better off

Practicing one’s art in more or less

The spirit of the poor juggler in the story

Of Christmas who, having no gift to bring

To the infant god, crept into the church

In the night and faced the crèche and juggled.