Amanda Ngoho Reavey
Poem for the End of the World
after Czeław Milosz
When the world ends
people may pillage, hoard food
and water everywhere
except here
at the end of the world
where the sky meets the sea.
Here, when the world ends,
the sun will blaze and smile the way
my grandfather sat up straight
and asked for food the day
before he died.
Here, when the world ends,
the Badjao will sing canticles,
boys will drink Coke from glass bottles,
and bet on fighting cocks.
Here, when the world ends,
Trappist monks will exit seclusion
and walk the dirt road to Sibunag,
offering absolutions.
Here, when the world ends,
I’ll put on my sadok and guide the carabao
through oil-mud to prepare for rice fields,
hoping my son will burn the land and till
(until)
the world ends.
—Submitted on 03/23/20
Amanda Ngoho Reavey is the author of Marilyn (the Operating System, 2015), winner of the Association for Asian American Studies Award for poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in Construction, Anthropoid, Truck, and Evening Will Come, among other journals, as well as in the anthologies Women: Poetry: Migration (Theenk Books, 2017), edited by Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), edited by Michael Boughn and others. She is a PhD student in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She blogs about mental health, disability rights, and accessibility at stereo-type.life.
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