APPLAUD! THE COMEDY IS OVER
I stand awaiting the moment
Of the total eclipse of the sun,
With wrinkled forehead.
I am called to listen
by a certain Nostradamus.
"It shall end, the world shall,
On the day,
The very day of the eclipse"
says he. He explains in monotone
The phenomenal power of the eclipse.
One before the birth of Alexander the Great
Accurately over the lands he conquered.
One before the birth of Muhammad
Accurately on the land of the Great One.
One before the birth of Karl Marx
Accurately over the vastness of his dream.
I am unsettled.
And have been unsettled in many areas of life.
Before the arrival of this day.
The feeling of doom lingers truly.
In this age of much change and much hope,
I do not know what is right or wrong.
What is true or real.
What is black or white or grey.
Whether my eyes speak the truth to me.
But I am hoping feverishly for the new era,
The Rennaissance of our age to emerge.
The inflexion of revolution shall come.
Whether it be our doom or not.
It shall come.
We have seen the film.
The credits have rolled.
And I leave the cinema in the rain.
To the end of the road.
About This Poem
Written in anticipation of the August 11, 1999 total solar eclipse—one of the most significant of the 20th century—this poem captures the millennial anxiety that characterized the late 1990s. The speaker invokes Nostradamus's prophecies, noting how eclipses preceded the births of Alexander the Great, Muhammad, and Karl Marx, each appearing over lands these figures would transform. Facing the approaching eclipse, the speaker confesses uncertainty: "I do not know what is right or wrong. / What is true or real." Yet within this uncertainty lies hope—not just for survival but for renaissance, for "the inflexion of revolution." The poem's title, taken from Mozart's alleged last words, frames human history as a performance that may be ending. The final image—leaving a cinema in the rain after the credits roll—beautifully captures that moment of emerging from a story into uncertain reality. Written at the cusp of the new millennium, the poem speaks to any moment of transition when we must step forward into an unknown future, whether it brings "doom" or rebirth.