As a child told to read the Bible, I’d skip ahead to the end,
to Revelations: plague, hail, beasts, burning. Apocalyptic.
The end’s foreshadowed by arrogance, by bland indifference
as statesmen stir up wars for spoils in this apocalypse.
Without protection, more whales and dolphins drag themselves
onto beaches to die. We’ll perish with them in the apocalypse.
Nowadays, so many movies and novels seem truer
than fiction: beautiful and sad because apocalyptic.
They start with some clear sense of the world
as it was before it turned apocalyptic:
people in parks, drinking coffee, eating in restaurants.
Then they’re falling down in ERs and it turns apocalyptic.
There’s a mass exodus as cities burn. Where will they go?
There’s only one world and it’s become apocalyptic.
Zika, Ebola, Avian Flu; melting icecaps, global warming;
zombies, wars, migrations, refugees: in a word, apocalyptic.
I step outside today into warm sunshine and feel a ripple
of cold. No one outraces time when it turns apocalyptic.