I am looking for poems by published (great) poets that deal with the question of the FUTURE how it affects them/us?

T.S. Elliot's poem "The Waste Land" deals with prophecies and touches on universal despair. I wrote a paper on this poem in undergrad and I am including some excerpts from my paper here to help. I won't bore you with the whole paper, I just went through and selected which parts I thought related to the future.

I hope this helps! In "The Waste Land" by T.S.Eliot, spiritual isolation is expressed through the evidence of the decay in both the moral and social modern world, the corruption of the characters in the poem, and the pollution that takes place in nature. These three aspects of the poem certainly support the view of the "The Waste Land" as a statement of human despair.In writing this elaborate work, Eliot successfully creates the image of a doomed world and the break-up of modern civilization.

Eliot gives descriptions of London which are very dismal and disconsolate. One image that stands out is that of a crowd of people walking across the London Bridge to go to work. The travelers on this somber journey seem as if they are heading toward hell since they are only filled with agony and remorse.

This shows us what we have to look forward to if nothing changes in our world. We as observers will one day follow in this same path as our ancestors who are just walking through the motions and are passionless. This is what our life will become.

This misery will spread and infect us all. These people appear condemned already, and death will certainly complete their ruin. They all march straight ahead and have the same routine lives and similar clothes, and "each man fixed his eyes before his feet" (line 65,1272).

The moral and social decay of the modern world has negatively affected so many and has even caused them to become emotionally numb to life. Tragically, there are thousands of these lost people roaming around without courage or any direction in life. All excitement has left them, and they have no hope for the future.

Their hopelessness will only increase from here on because they are all dead inside. One reason these people seem so distanced from life is because they have lost all sense of community among their peers. They do not feel like a part of a whole society anymore because they have lost connections with others.

Their isolation is undoubtedly a result of the destruction of their world and causes them to sink further into the rigid routine and therefore, to lose their own identities. In Section two "Game of Chess" he talks about how this is an era of pollution, corruption of people and the absence of love. But since there seems to be no hope left in this world, and all purity and innocence have been lost, the future seems bleak.

In Section Three, "The Fire Sermon," we are presented with a tragic image of the pollution of the natural world as the "last fingers of a leaf clutch and sink into the wet bank" (lines 173-174,1275). This image is symbolic of our inevitable death and forces us to realize our own mortality. We then recognize that no matter how hard we fight and how much we long to live, death is final and inescapable.

The phrase, "the river's tent in broken" (line 173,1275), indicates that the life along the river is already dead. The nymphs have neglected the vegetation surrounding the river, and the river bank becomes polluted and unsuitable for humans to live upon. Only rats occupy the vegetation now because they can feed on decay and waste.

They creep through the slimy water in the river and lie in the garbage that has washed to the shore. This image is enough to make all men weep for the loss of the beauty of nature. The destruction of nature adds to the despair that lingers in the waste land.

Here is a link to the poem "The Waste Land" in its entirety. http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html.

I can't find the poem online, so I have typed it as it appears in the 'Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times' anthology edited by Neil Astley. "The story of a story" Once upon a time there was a story Its end came Before its beginning And its beginning came After its end Its heroes entered it After their death And left it Before their birth Its heroes talked About some earth and some heaven They said all sorts of things Only they didn't say What they themselves didn't know That they were only heroes in a story In a story whose end comes Before its beginning And whose beginning comes After its end By Vasko Popa Translated by Anne Pennington There are several ways to look at this poem. One explanation is that we focus so much on the future that it happens before we're even there.It can also be interpreted as predetermination, or as leaders ("heroes") being trapped in past ideals when they make their decision.

But as with any poem, it can be interpreted in many other ways as well. On a side note, if it aids in the connections you need, Vasko Popa was the first Yugoslavian after WW2 to break from Socialist Realism, which was compulsory under Stalin and painted an "optimistic" perception of Soviet socialism and Communist revolution (1/2).

I enjoy poetry, all the time, so I already had these links saved as favorites: ENJOY! This site has a variety of poems by known authors such as William Blake, Sara Teasdale, William Shakespear, and many other famous names. They update the site with new poems regularly which makes it even better because you can get all of the well known poetry all on one website.

Links: theotherpages.org/poems/ bob.fooguru.org.

Here is a web site, I read a few poems it appears to be what you are looking for good luck. poemhunter.com/poems/future/ Vince.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.