The World Of The End

The End Of The World by Archibald MacLeish

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 the 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.

The World Of The End by Simon Bucher-Jones

White out expectantly, the too full page,
The headless editor was tightening
The pencil parallels to form a cage

And Bugs the Bunny was engaged in frightening

The apoplectic, hesitant and stuttering pig
Porcinely and protractedly, agog
Until the words, unutterably big

Write out expectantly their ambient fog:

And there, there underneath, there, there foot-wreathed
Under the mirror glass pavements, thousand curling toes

There in the awful underness, the gulf, endeeped,

Nothing, but nothing, in the abyss shows,

There in the black ink blackness of black strokes,
The kraken of the underworld concealed

Only the epitaph – ‘tha’ that’s all folks!’
Appears where every ending is revealed.