Doomsday
Doomsday - form Summary
Villanelle of Catastrophic Repetition
This poem is a villanelle that uses its strict repeating lines and rhyme pattern to produce an obsessive, circular momentum. Refrains return like tolling bells, making the apocalyptic images—crumbling city, broken clock, frantic objects—feel inevitable and ritualized. The rigid form intensifies the sense of doom and helplessness, so the recurring phrases become both prediction and indictment, driving the poem toward a resigned, cyclical conclusion.
Read Complete AnalysesThe idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans Atop the broken universal clock: The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens. Out painted stages fall apart by scenes While all the actors halt in mortal shock: The idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans. Streets crack through in havoc-split ravines As the doomstruck city crumbles block by block: The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens. Fractured glass flies down in smithereens; Our lucky relics have been put in hock: The idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans. The monkey's wrench has blasted all machines; We never thought to hear the holy cock: The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens. Too late to ask if end was worth the means, Too late to calculate the toppling stock: The idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans, The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens.
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