Written 18 March 1967 for my girlfiend Debbie (in less than an hour). This was 
an assignment to interpret or comment on an poem by Archibald MacLeish regarding
the trivial human activities at the end of the world. The Professor in the course 
never gave grades higher than D. Thus the satire. This poem was handed in but not graded. 

MacLeish's poem is included below:


Unwind the universe my friend
The teacher told the student
Here is a poem about its end
I hope that its resolvent

Fourteen lines it has you see
My beautiful student pet
And so I think you must agree
The poem is a sonnet

I'll give you several formulae
To help you understand it
But please do feel completely free
To add new rules to make it fit

But a poem must conform you know
To several elementary rules
Beyond them it can never grow
As has been taught in all the schools

So here's a poem I do confess
Is somewhat out of norm
And I have made a thorough mess
Trying to make it conform

So to my students all I give
This too elusive poem
And hope that while I live
I'll find it under that dome

But what?, one student says to me
Your logic I defy
This poem does not fit you see
Despite what you may try

In the poem is unfurled
A veritable circus promenade
And it tells about the end of the world
Where all our normal laws are stayed

So it should not really be a surprise
To find these laws suspended
Don't try to use your classical rules
This poem shows how they have ended. 



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. 

Archibald MacLeish