"if someone where really the last man" (Robert Lax)

if someone
were really
the last man
alive on
earth

he'd
not be
a hermit

he'd be
a sur-
vivor

& would
probably
feel called
upon

to father
forth a
new race
of men

or, at
least,
of beings

he might
(but maybe
he would
n't)

he might
for one thing,
not believe
he was the
last

or he might
be content
just to
watch the
days go
by

speculating
on what the
silence would
be like

when even
he had
vanished

- Robert Lax (taken from A Thing That Is, 1997)