Doom by ,The exotically named Adelaide Crapsey was a New York-born poet and English literature teacher whose short life was tragically cut short by tuberculosis. Her poetry output was fairly substantial but she will best be remembered by students of 19th and 20th-century poets as the inventor of a writing technique called “the cinquain”. This was probably born out of her love of the Japanese “tanka and haiku” forms of writing. It’s a kind of compressed style of writing that had many admirers including another famous writer, Ezra Pound.
Doom by Adelaide Crapsey
Peter stands by the gate,
And Michael by the throne.
“Peter, I would pass the gate
And come before the throne.”
“Whose spirit prayed never at the gate
In life nor at the throne,
In death he may not pass the gate
To come before the throne:”
Peter said from the gate;
Said Michael from the throne.