Third Poetry Blog: The Little Apocalypse

From the title The Little Apocalypse, and the first couple of lines I concluded that the poem was probably about the end of the world for these bugs and the place they call home. A rain storm is something small to humans, but to the insect world it can wipe everything away… kind of like an apocalypse… The line, “High up, in another world, the clouds assemble and mumble their messages” to me this represents the thunder and lightning in the sky which is always a message that a big storm is coming. What really proved that a rain storm was the apocalypse for insects in this poem was the line, “the robin, the great worrier, above” this was showing how robins are stronger animals and that rain storms don’t affect them as much compared to a slow, tiny, helpless insect below. The last lines of the poem really sums it all up, and that’s where I believe the climax is because of its intensity and the eerie feeling it leaves the reader with. “Bright bandages of fog starting to comfort the aftermath. Then, from the black horizon, four horses heave up, flash on their faces.” To me fog represents death, massacre almost. When I think of an old war, after a battle is over it is very quiet and there is a fog (at least that is how it is in the movies), and in this case it represents the death of the many insects that once lived in this place under everyone’s feet, creating their own world. The fog almost acts as a blanket to cover up the aftermath. The allusion I also gathered from that last line was the part with the four horses. Being the not very biblical person I am, I did have to look this up; I learned that these horses represent the four horsemen of the apocalypse and the ending of the world. In this case, the horses are ending the world of these little insects, which leaves the poem with a creepy intensity. Maybe this poem is meant for the readers to learn to take life a little less for granted because life can be over in an instant just like these insects. At the end of the day, I might have taken this poem a little too literately, but it really does make me feel bad for every spider I have smashed, or every ant I have sprayed knowing that things like insects have their own little world and it can be gone in an instant just because they are so helpless in their world.