A fellow for Poetry of the 34th U.P. National Writers' Workshop in Baguio (1998), Arvin Mangohig has now gained for himself considerable mileage as a writer for having consistently won several of the well-known literary contests' First Prizes. The poem that appears here, is no exception. "The End of the World" won the  Pen & Ink's College Poetry Contest  and was published  in Book 5, December 1998. The judges were Krip Yuson and Marne Kilates. 

Arvin is taking his MA in Creative Writing at the U.P. And he says of his influences: 

     "I am mainly attracted to stylists and technicians. My formative were immeasurably influenced by the fictionist Katherine Mansfield. The latter Auden and Rilke are also favorites. Lately I have been intensely reading Contemporary Poetry." 

Our spines grew blue from the cold and our talk  
turned to disasters about the end of the world, 
a mere seasonal taste brought on by movies. 

The mechanics of destruction were simple, 
somewhere in space lurked global killers, 
whose self-extraction from asteroid belts was as certain 

As their sinister intercept drift into earth's orbit 
as was the case of a huge meteor that passed between us and our moon. 
It took days for astronomers to find out and confirm the near collision. 

In that dark heavy with apocalypse and signs 
someone called out your name with that rare grace 
of a tongue that has never grown used to saying it aloud. 

So that you were conjured there so completely by grace 
my mouth was filled with the sudden names of stars 
as must have been those of the first men who looked up  

At the ancient sky and saw comets, meteors and foretold 
the end of their world. Yet when the hour of destruction 
did not come, had to kill themselves for honor's sake. 

The first falling stars appeared, hurtling into 
their terrible survival rate, our heads imagining illumination, 
thankful that not one of them will make it to earth tonight. 

And yet your name released from a tongue other than mine 
rang on into the clear sky, piercing the atmosphere of my body, 
of what could've been the last night of the world as I knew it. 

Your name reeled and burned through terrestial tissue 
into my center of gravity, a heart recovering its desire, 
Foretelling the guarantee of my missing you for the rest of the year. 

 
  
 

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