A Woman Unconscious
Russia and America circle each other; Threats nudge an act that were without doubt A melting of the mould in the mother, Stones melting about the root. The quick of the earth burned out: The toil of all our ages a loss With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought (Not to be thought ridiculous) Shies from the world-cancelling black Of its playing shadow: it has learned That there's no trusting (trusting to luck) Dates when the world's due to be burned; That the future's no calamitous change But a malingering of now, Histories, towns, faces that no Malice or accident much derange. And though bomb be matched against bomb, Though all mankind wince out and nothing endure -- Earth gone in an instant flare -- Did a lesser death come Onto the white hospital bed Where one, numb beyond her last of sense, Closed her eyes on the world's evidence And into pillows sunk her head.
A Woman Unconscious - form Summary
From Apocalypse to Bedside
The poem is structured in seven quatrains that move from the Cold War threat of global nuclear destruction to the quiet death of a patient in a hospital bed. This narrowing of scale makes the final scene unsettling: even if humanity imagines catastrophe as a sudden public event, death can arrive privately and almost unnoticed. The ending sets one individual loss against fears of the world ending.
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