by Luis G. Dato
The end, the end, my dear, it is the end,
For all unwitting the glad days shall roll,
No less than the sad ones, to blight the soul
That sees how all to nothingness portend,
And thus no power of earth and sky can bend
Fate from its will nor change for aye the scroll
The archangel wrote at sword’s point since the Fall —
The best, the fairest will to đust descend!
And so, my dear, what then for us to do,
While this the happy world of flowers we tread,
If not to get from life what is life’s due,
Ere the bell tolling say that we are dead?
Sooner or later, earth we’ll bid adieu,
Our bodies corpses on which worms have fed.
— November 21, 1965
