God lay dead in heaven;
Angels sang the hymn of the end;
Purple winds went moaning,
Their wings drip-dripping
With blood
That fell upon the earth.
It, groaning thing,
Turned black and sank.
Then from the far caverns
Of dead sins
Came monsters, livid with desire.
They fought,
Wrangled over the world,
A morsel.
But of all sadness this was sad -
A woman's arms tried to shield
The head of a sleeping man
From the jaws of the final beast.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
I knew this poem from reading Crane since my university days. It never became a favorite but when I arrived home from work on November 22,1963, I immediately rummaged through my Crane poems to read it again and weep at the last few lines.