Answer: The right answer is the second one: An allusion to conflict.
Explanation: Just to elaborate a little bit more on the answer, it is relevant to mention that American poet Robert Hayden (1913-1980) was very concerned with the experiences and history of Black Americans, hence his reference to two major conflicts that directly affected that community: the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, represented by the cities of Selma and Saigon, respectively. From the city of Selma, in Alabama, departed, in 1965, a series of protest marches organized with the goal of claiming the constitutional right of African Americans to vote. Those who participated in them were violently attacked, arrested and even killed. At the same time, and paradoxically, many African Americans had been sent to Vietnam in order to fight in the war and freed the South Vietnamese people, even though their own rights were not protected in their own country. For that reason, one of the major American Civil Rights Movement organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, became the first one in publicly showing opposition to the war, linking the two movements (anti-Vietnam war and Civil Rights Movement) inextricably.
It is for that reason that the speaker in Hayden’s poem resorts to Monet’s famous painting, which captures the serenity and the beauty of a little corner of his Japanese garden, in an attempt to escape, if only for a moment, from that violent reality.
