By the end of the poem, the speaker is sure that something even worse is
coming.The speaker descends into a bizarre vision, observing a sphinx staring cruelly
at him in a desert, perhaps offering him the clues to understanding what is
happening around him while also embodying primal, ancient ways of being and
creative, fertile energies that represent a potential union and rebirth.The poem ends where it began: in a haze of
ominous foreshadowing, the spectre of a looming monster of the future rapidly
approaching, the universe spinning and growing into something different than
it was.