Armageddon (1965)

Black is black, is white, is gray

Is green and pink and blue

Rose, another name for you!

Sing, we jolly citizens of heaven and of hell

Glory triumphant, unicorns and strumpets!

Oh, come and quaff a final mug of beer

Come lift the cup nine thousand miles away

Time’s a bird of flight

And the bird has flown today

The poets laid up their pens with folded hands

The wells were dry of ink and inspiration

And died, like everything, across the land

Loud is quiet is middle-tone,

Dark banjos by the river played dusty songs, and died

Cross the tracks and leave alone

Red Riding Hood explored the forest dank

And found a thinking, clanking tank,

A killing tank, electric black, which never thought of turning back

All mimsy were the borogroves, and gone

Screamed in fear the goober birds, where jet planes raining death

Their aerial death dance did at dawn

Hot ashes blur the sands of time

Gray scum where footprints print no more

Searching for their Lost Lenore

The Twilight of the Gods is come

To fading strains of Siegfried’s Funeral March

The Nine Maids of Wotan ride — for some

One sky-burst above a vernal wood can…uh…

Learn us more of mortal man

Than Smokey Bear the Forest Ranger can

Fog on the bay going to the north-burn

And watch your radiation counters, please

For those who go this way do not return

Wind from the north-burn probed the plains for life

Sere grass shuddered at its breath

And all the north wind found was death

The rest is silence.