Our Fate is Sealed
Otis Knoop, 12
The question that has always troubled me
When the end of the world is at hand,
When the human race makes their last stand;
What will come to be?
Will darkness and woe come to plight us?
Will priests pray when God has not come to right us?
Like the breath of a child blows out a light
Life itself will be snuffed out tonight.
When the ghostly spectres roam in the roots of our sanity
Will we remember our qualms?
While the fate of the world slips out from our grasp
A cacophony of screams
That will most certainly haunt our dreams
One thing that I have always thought;
The world will recover nought
But although the end is near, we might be healed
One thing is clear; our fate is sealed.
A note from the author: Robert Frost’s poem, "Fire and Ice," influenced my poem (related to my thoughts about the pandemic) in many ways. We both wrote about the end of the world and what it would be like. Although we didn’t write about the world ending in the same way, we both summarized that it is inevitable, and will happen one way or another. One poetic device that I was inspired by him to use was symbolism–he used fire and ice to symbolize power and hatred, and I used “ghostly spectres” to symbolize our guilt. I wanted to give the poem a dark mood, to give people a sense of what might happen.
Kathleen Milligan says
What an amazingly creative and thoughtful young poet.
Addison Scott says
this is so beatiful