Apocalypse
Of all sixty of us I am the only one who went to the four corners though I don't say it out of pride but more like a type of regret, and I did it because there was no one I truly believed in though once when I climbed the hill in Skye and arrived at the rough tables I saw the only other elder who was a vegetarian--in Scotland-- and visited Orwell and rode a small motorcycle to get from place to place; and I immediately stopped eating fish and meat and lived on soups; and we wrote each other in the middle and late fifties though one day I got a letter from his daughter that he had died in an accident; he was I'm sure of it, an angel who flew in midair with one eternal gospel to proclaim to those inhabiting the earth and every nation; and now that I go through my papers every day I search and search for his letters but to my shame I have even forgotten his name, that messenger who came to me with tablespoons of blue lentils.
From American Sonnets by Gerald Stern. Copyright © 2002 by Gerald Stern. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.