They rationed the last food,
Men in straight-jacket white
Handing us small packets:
They tasted just like bitter almonds.
We took them to our homes anyway,
We didn't care if it tasted strong,
We all knew it'd kill us --
That's what poison is for.
So we sit, eat, and wait.

It strikes us as funny, as we eat,
That we - who'd been told the end would come -
Are almost glad it finally has.
We knew the world would die,
We've waited for the end
For all these centuries.
Now we have no groceries to get,
No notes to write, no chores to finish:
The end brings a kind of dark freedom.

No one has fixed the roads.
Broken stones can lame hooves,
Legs break on rusted steel.
Perhaps that is why they haven't come.
"The Four Horsemen Delayed By Sore Hoof"
Is not normally in the paper.
Or maybe they got tired
Of riding down this road
Then having us stop them.

We eat the food, good to the last bite
And the poison adds a nice flavour
As we wait for someone to die first..
An old man to the side
Holds a sign up: REPENT!
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!
We mock him with our poison-wracked words:
"Try telling us something we don't know!"
No one can save us. Not from ourselves.

The four horsemen ride now
And we don't even watch.
Maybe we're just too tired.
A few of us begin to die now
As the poison seeps into our veins.
Better this than dying of hunger.
Someone beats the old man,
Breaking his stupid sign:
"We know!" (But we don't care.)

It's the end of the world, don't you know?
And maybe we'll offer the horsemen
Some food when they canter up the road.
It tastes just like almonds.
It's really quite tasty.
They won't smell the poison.
Maybe they'd be glad to stop their ride
And lay their burdens down beside ours,
And wait for the inevitable.

- Josh MacLeod, 2001.