AT THE DEATHBED OF THE MILLENNIUM,
by Alexis Brodesky
 

No doubt the first to die under the glare
of world-wide coverage. After the nurse was gone,
it pressed my hand: "Auf Wiederseh'n, take care,
we'll meet again, I'm certain, later on."
 

I was surprised. It had, way back, clung
to stuff like afterlife, but by the time
we met, beyonds and bliss were fairly wrung
out, as all serious efforts toward rhyme.
 

"Superstitions," it shrugged, and strangely enough,
those fits of anger, lusts of gilt and gore,
huge needs, grew huger, and it wore a rough
tattoo on one arm, a dragon-crested MORE.
 

With that, a love for steel and speedy gadgets,
for stats (the more to feel the MORE, perhaps,)
employing EM fields for angels, mad jets
as gods which hit no matter where: no gaps.
 

The hypochondria of its decrepitude...
Each night, each breath, it feared, was the last,
in groans of boredom, whines of solitude,
nostalgia for the irrecoverable past.
 

All told, however, I wish its last words might
prove true. The reason's easy to surmise:
from birth it's put up with me, till tonight;
the new one all but starts with my demise.