End of Days: A Poem

My own little Armageddon poem.

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A faint dull roar, as of a coming train,
Growing still closer as the eons pass;
A sudden thunder in the summer rain.

(Priests in their vestments cease the morning mass
And stare bewildered out into the storm
Through sudden, eerie paling of stained glass.)

The Final Beast has no defining form;
It slithers shapeless through the shadowed earth,
Oblivious to fire and brimstone storm.

(No one can quite recall a dollar’s worth,
Or how much milk is, or where slippers hide.
They laugh in puzzled fear, and not in mirth.)

They say that Hell is longer than it’s wide
And twice as deep as that; it may be so.
Along its walls, the grinning shadows slide.

(The children are unsure of where to go;
They huddle in the schoolyard, whispering,
Afraid to play in this new ashen snow.)

The final army has been gathering
For centuries to launch this last assault.
All of a sudden, songbirds cease to sing

And turn to hawks, circling on black-tipped wing
While far below the earth is sown with salt
And dies at last, and with it everything.