In good poet­ry there is so often a great last line, some­thing that effec­tive­ly clos­es the poem leav­ing the reader/listener with the white space/silence in which to reflect on their expe­ri­ence. Some­times the last line has a sense of fade: take Ozy­man­dias, for exam­ple (see here), in which the once-mighty stat­ue of that ancient king now lies bro­ken and decayed and the final line “The lone and lev­el sands stretch far away” draws our atten­tion to the bar­ren desert in which the ruins reside and allows the irony to sink in.

Oth­er poems end with an encap­su­lat­ing line, sum­ming up the theme of the entire poem in one line: Wil­frid Owen’s last line in Dulce Et Deco­rum Est (see here), after a series of shock­ing imagery about the grim real­i­ties of the front line, sums up the empti­ness of the plat­i­tudes around “hon­our and glo­ry” that the gen­er­als had hoped to instil into the com­mon sol­dier: “The old Lie: Dulce et deco­rum est Pro patria mori” (“it is sweet and fit­ting to die for one’s coun­try”).

Oth­er poems end with a sur­prise, a jolt – often called the “trap door” or the “rug pull” – and today’s poem from Louis Mac­Ne­ice fits the bill per­fect­ly. See what you think…

Louis Mac­Ne­ice (1907–1963) was an Irish poet and play­wright, born in Belfast, and a mem­ber of the Auden Group, that loose affil­i­a­tion of lit­er­ary fig­ures active in the 1930s and includ­ing W. H. Auden, Christo­pher Ish­er­wood, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis, names that have come down to mod­ern times with per­haps more celebri­ty than MacNeice’s (and two of whom have appeared in the pages of this blog before, here and here). Mac­Ne­ice’s body of work was wide­ly appre­ci­at­ed by the pub­lic dur­ing his life­time, how­ev­er, due to his appeal­ing style and the fact that, like many mod­ern Eng­lish poets, he found an audi­ence for his work through British radio.

Prayer Before Birth is a poem writ­ten at the height of the Sec­ond World War, and takes the form of an ago­nised plea from the mouth of an unborn infant in its moth­er’s womb. Dra­mat­ic in inten­si­ty, the poem bemoans the deplorable state of the world, but artic­u­lates that, whilst liv­ing in it is a painful expe­ri­ence, being born into it must be tru­ly ter­ri­fy­ing. It mir­rors per­haps the grow­ing mod­ern trend of young peo­ple choos­ing not to have chil­dren due to their fears of what the world is becom­ing.

As pes­simism goes, it’s hard to beat, but it’s incan­ta­to­ry rhythms, allit­er­a­tions and rep­e­ti­tions gives it a hyp­not­ic, rit­u­al­is­tic qual­i­ty and, as I said, it serves up its final line with a pow­er­ful punch.

I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the blood­suck­ing bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-foot­ed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, con­sole me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; pro­vide me
With water to dan­dle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; for­give me
For the sins that in me the world shall com­mit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my trea­son engen­dered by trai­tors beyond me,
my life when they mur­der by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lec­ture me, bureau­crats hec­tor me, moun­tains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to fol­ly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beg­gar refus­es
my gift and my chil­dren curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
human­i­ty, would dra­goon me into a lethal automa­ton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dis­si­pate my entire­ty, would
blow me like this­tle­down hith­er and
thith­er or hith­er and thith­er
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Oth­er­wise kill me.