kmessner‘s post on post-apocalyptic YA pointed me to this dystopic Auden poem, “The Unknown Citizen,” which she suggested reading in conjunction with pambachorz‘s most excellent Candor.
Which got me thinking about my favorite post-apocalyptic poem–Richard Wilbur’s “Advice to a Prophet.” I first met this poem–of all places–on a sample AP English test in high school, and it’s been one of those whose lines run through my head at random moments ever since:
Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?–
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone’s face?
or
What should we be without
The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,
These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
But before that, thanks to a stray reference somewhere in one or another of Madeleine L’Engle’s books (one of the O’Keefe family stories?), I’d already imprinted on W.B. Yeats’ apocalyptic “The Second Coming”:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold …
What about you? Have an favorite dystopic or apocalyptic (post- or not-) poems you want to share?