The reason for Living is to get
Ready to Stay Dead a long time²
From the Cosmic Accident of Birth,
To the Final Grotesque Joke of Death³
I am not Resigned to the Shutting away of
Loving Hearts in the Hard Ground – so it is
And so it will be, for so it has been, time out
Of mind: into the Darkness they go, the Wise
And Lovely Lovers & Thinkers, into the Earth
With you: be one with dull, indiscriminate Dust⁴
In the Face of Death and all that it is and all that
It shall be I Stand Powerless – as if I’m no more
Than a String caught in the Early Morning Wind⁵
Death Ignores Protocol: a sweep of its cape whisks
One at Random into Dust – it is Not Even Looking⁶
Between the Living world and the world of Death is
A Clear, Cold Pane: one who Looks too Close Fogs
It with their Breath, or Holds their Breath too long⁷
Death is a Dialogue between the Spirit & the Dust⁸
Death is a Tower to which the Soul ascends to
Spend a Meditative Hour – that Never Ends⁹
My Dream of Death: Luminous Atomic
Particle-Arc falls across and through
The curve of Eternal Time-Space¹⁰
¹ Ghassan Zaqtan tr. Fady Joudah, That Life
² William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
³ Sylvia Plath, Dirge for a Joker
⁴ Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dirge Without Music
⁵ Jamaica Kincaid, At the Bottom of the River
⁶ Denise Levertov, During a Son’s Dangerous Illness
⁷ Wendell Berry, The Cold Pane
⁸ Emily Dickinson, Death is a Dialogue Between
⁹ Langston Hughes, Tower
¹⁰ Ann Lauterbach, Task: To Open