DAWN BREAKS OVER THE BLACK SEA

One of several small children is hidden among deck chairs, his eyes 
reflect the sea, more coral than green, and the sea is irked, the black 
sea is glaring, and he is irked, this small boy, as the adults pass, as the 
adults take their long rolling strides and greet the dawn, as they greet 
each other, predictably in the weak predictable light, and his mother is 
one of them, and the black sea does its business without reflection, like 
a nation in the grip of war, like a large city releasing dark birds back into 
the sky, the black sea, which is eternal, and this passage which is meant 
to be an enlarged form of their world, something eternal and much 
larger than what happens back home, in their lives, in their successes 
and disappointments, in their dreams and desires

And dawn wraps itself up and spits itself out on the deck of the ship, in 
itself redundant and eternal and small, like a champagne cork on a 
rolling deck, and dawn breaks and breaks -- many people are breaking 
just now in this world, which is at war with itself -- and she is one of 
them, the mother of one of several small children hidden among the 
deck chairs, she is breaking, and what can adults say that will allow 
them to escape or to hide? something in this atmosphere escapes the 
adults, only children can feel it, a grievance in the salt and mist, a revolt 
in the horizon, a truth, a truth, only children can feel it, and anyhow the 
mother of the boy is distracted, she was pretty in vienna where the 
light was artificial and gay, she bends her neck to greet the gaze of the 
men who pass her 

But it is not the same, she turns to the man with whom she is walking 
and says something private and hideous and true, and his eyes sparkle 
and he looks away, and his eyes are clear as the rays of the rising sun

  George Wallace