Meteor

Benjamin Albert Botkin

More beautiful than ships or planes
Are lightning-flash and thunderbolt
Of runaway night-frightened trains.

Swift, brutal in a wild assault
Of frantic wings and flying heels,
They leap from out the catapult

Of distance, thunder in their wheels
And lightning in their Cyclops’ eye
And serpent tail, with warning squeals

As if the shaken stars and sky
Were falling through the holes they rip
In night and silence. Demon cry

And dragon flight, receding, slip
Into the reticence of space—
More terrible than plane or ship
In fiery speed and iron grace.