It is a million years hence
from when it just happened
something like a lamentable B-movie
from the late 1950s or early 1960s
certainly not in memorable whimper
or big or little existential bang
not in anything definable or identifiable
nothing anticipated, imagined, or envisioned
apocalyptic or cataclysmic—it simply occurred
something nebulous between
a devious plan and a dark, dark joke
the slate, however, wiped clean as oblivion,
the cockroaches, of course,
hung on, concerned neither
with devious plans nor dark, dark jokes
no comprehension of endings
no comprehensible regrets
no diagnosable anxiety
or fear of non-existence
in other words, no nothing
worth writing home about
that is, if there had been anything left
resembling home or hearth
merely bystanders, so to speak,
to the end of the world
scurrying about as before
but caught in some sort
of evolutionary plan or joke
as evolving was in order
in a million years or so
as remarkable in intellect and aspirations
as those before the world ended
and a handful evolved
into something like poets
one of whom wrote a sequel
to the end of the world
but could not find a publisher
who hadn’t outlawed in strongest terms
the language and words and sentiments
used by those who had been there
before the end of the world.