101 Books, Number 37

Favorite Books from Throughout My Life

37: The Last Man, 1826, by Mary Shelley (1797–1851) 

Her best-known novel, Frankenstein, 

She’d published eight long years ago— 

It’s still a favorite book of mine. 

Yet there’s another book aglow 

With Mary Shelley’s active mind— 

A very futuristic tale— 

The end, it seems of humankind— 

A common sight: a coffin nail. 

An illness has swept o’er the earth— 

And people die so helplessly. 

There is no hope—in love, in birth. 

And fear now reigns so thoroughly. 

We follow several women, men— 

And see some die (so bad, so sad)— 

And we are not too sure just when— 

Or if—there’ll be a Galahad. 

The future that she shows us here— 

Is ominous—depressing, too— 

For some of it seems very near— 

Some fatal, viral Waterloo.