The End Of The World Poem by Archibald MacLeish
The End Of The World
Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.
A deceptively simple sonnet about the absurdity and futility of life lived with no hope of anything to come after it except the complete oblivion of death.
Regardless of the typo, I love this - especially the second stanza. Cancelled skies - brilliant.
Two years later, the same poem has the same typo: 'Quite unexpectedly to top blew off: ' should be: 'Quite unexpectedly the top blew off: '
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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10/7/2024 12:49:54 AM # 1.0.0.1119
The last line of the first verse should read '...the top blew off.'