This is the way the world ends:
with a woman’s pain and a squalling child
the old world dying and the new world rushing in
like the newborn’s head forcing its way in pain from
darkness
to
light

A Big Bang of agony and delight
to start a life of sorrow,
to end in death,
to inaugurate forever joy,
to end in life with the end of ending lives.

The end of the world comes with a bang, a whimper,
a cry muffled by sheep-sound and mother’s breast
the groaning of the earth as she whirls under the silent,
shouting stars and the assembled host of heaven,
waiting to be born
again

…and as the drenching downpour faded into barely-more-than mist, the clouds began to let shine through a springtime sun—and though still gray the sky (if mottled, now and then, with blue), the leavèd trees all round flamed brighter in their verdancy than any I have ever seen…

The first line would be set on the ragged right edge of the text to mark its rhythmic position, were that possible.

I sat with pen And sweetly swelling strains of strings, Poetry to write – Alas, my sleeping girl-child woke; There’ll be no poetry tonight.

A single dark arc cuts across A harvest face, oranged by thick atmosphere ‘tween it and me, hung low and solid in the east, its face turned partly away to face its bright lord.

Moon shadows dapple the asphalt
As it rolls away beneath my feet
Outdone now and again by lamplight
Till golden shadows give way again
To silver glimmerings through tree-limbs