I am in Mourning for my Life—²
Alive with the qualifications of the Dead—³
The Deadest thing alive enough
To have Strength to Die.⁴
Ankles are no match for our body’s
Insistence on becoming Earth again—⁵
Life Seeps out of us—and into the Ground—⁶
We are Dying, we are Dying, we are
All of us Dying—all we can do
Is be Willing to die.⁷
Death, who Takes
What we would keep,
Leaves what we would Lose.⁸
Don’t call us Dead—call us:
Alive someplace better!⁹
This is Mortality—
This is Eternity.¹⁰
¹ W.S. Graham, An Entertainment for W.S. Graham
² Anton Chekhov tr. Constance Garnett, The Sea-Gull
³ Edgar Allan Poe, Loss of Breath
⁴ Thomas Hardy, Neutral Tones
⁵ Franny Choi, Perihelion: A History of Touch
⁶ Ken Chen, You May Visit the Cosmos
⁷ D.H. Lawrence, The Ship of Death
⁸ William Butler Yeats, John Kinsella’s Lament for Mrs. Mary Moore
⁹ Danez Smith, Summer, Somewhere
¹⁰ Marianne Moore, What are Years?