Page 52 - New Year's cards

Text:

1 When mankind sore--or morose--
Turned from old Ouroboros

2 (That twisted eater of tails)
To its own tellers of tales,

3 The truth could not help bending
Around a moral ending

4 And the human home in space
Flattened to a fearsome place.

5 (Can the stone-deaf cosmos hear
Pleas cried to the stratosphere?—

6 “Lord, don’t throw us down black holes,
Where the devil forks bad souls!”)

7 Now unbidden and unsought,
Worming its way into thought,

8 Unfurls this one-sided rhyme;
Yes, it is just about time—

9 To wonder before the birth
Of another year on earth:

10 Will it be hell or heaven
In two thousand eleven?