Supposedly, Barack Obama told disconsolate
White House staffers, the morning after
Donald Trump’s election to succeed him,
“It’s not the end of the world until
It's the end of the world.” Yesterday,
Roughly a year and a half later, a van
Plowed through pedestrians in Toronto,
Killing at least ten of them, and the Saudis
Bombed a wedding in Yemen, killing twenty
Or thirty civilians. Not the end of the world.
The day before that, a man wearing a jacket
And nothing else opened fire with an AR-15
In a Nashville Waffle House, killing four, and a bomb
Went off in Afghanistan among a crowd
Registering to vote, slaughtering thirty
Or more. Also not the end of the world. More
Killing to report tomorrow, I’m sure. Survivors
Of the great plagues such as the Black Death
And others often wrote of all the bodies
Being piled or burned, the emptied cities
And overgrown fields, as the end of the world,
But no, not the end of the world. My mother
Was fond of pointing out that when she was a girl,
World War Two bid fair to be the end of the world,
But no. Not the end of the world. I was an infant
At her breast, literally, during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Not the end of the world.
We need to redefine the end of the world.
Or maybe I just don’t give a damn about the end
Of the world as fantasized. It never happens,
And yet, every day, in the fat and moneyed
Peacetime USA alone, the world ends, the whole
World that ever was ends and then never was
For upwards of seven thousand people.
And even in America, most worlds don't end by guns.
Things fall apart. People get sick and old.
Three hundred American worlds an hour,
Five per minute, another every dozen seconds
Or so, go the way of all worlds. If you’re absorbing
These words, friend, you have not yet seen
The end of the world, but you will, you know,
And I who have not seen it either also know.
We all know it’s always the end of the world.
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