Ten A.M., November Fourth, 1964

The end at last has come, seen from afar.

Did we follow a falling star?

Is it truly the twilight glow

Fading slowly but soon to go

That shines on the world where I was b o r n ?

I know not what the coming years will show.

I only know that this defeat is shorn

Of half its bitterness by long defeat;

The sea has left its wreckage on the beach,

The self same sea that now may find it meet

To nibble at our sandy ramparts, reach

Its silver tendrils through the growing breach

And drown our lights.

And drown our lights like the mirage that lured.

Was there some ill we might have cured?

Or is it only age that kills,

Eating the state as the sea the hills,

Turning our labor to ashes and dust?

I know not what my dearest friends, who kill

Our freedom blindly, when and if they must

Answer my questions in a ruined world

Will tell me. Does it matter? They have won

And we have lost, our tattered banners furled.

And all our fight is wasted; it is done.

The votes are cast, the people had their fun.

The night will fall.

The night will fall; all must from free decline.

Cannot the sun forever shine?

O r if in time the sun must fall

Why must my time be that, of all

The times I might have chanced in? Must I face

The rising tide that drowns our dikes deep, call

My challenge to the screaming winds that race

To our destruction, to lie broken, pinned,

Beneath the wreck where freedom is a lie ?

I know that all of this is empty wind.

As empty as the wind that sweeps the sky

Of Arizona, where our dream will die.