The Mystery of Death

The Mystery of Death

 

‘I am going the way of all the earth.’ Joshua xxiii, 14.

 

 

Sooner or later, all life dies –

rain forests or the briar rose,

the dinosaurs and dragonflies.

What starts, must end; what opens, close.

 

I know I too must someday go.

Inexorable death requires

we render up the life we owe.

Whatever breathes, also expires.

 

This precious, sensate, agent I,

comprising all I know of me,

must fade, must wither, fail and die.

I know that I must cease to be.

 

And yet, this all-observant eye,

that watches what I feel and do –

the I that knows that I shall die –

does not expect extinction too.

 

No words or music, drugs or wine,

nor sensual ecstasy, can still

that small insistent voice of mine –

recorder, critic, what you will –

 

my self-aware self, consciousness,

that registers experience,

demanding I should second-guess

the things I do, or think, or sense.

 

Beneath each I another hides,

as oceans deepen, shelf on shelf.

The schizophrenic mind divides

from every self a further self.

 

Shall they all die? I know they must.

But I, who know that all life dies –

that I’ll disintegrate as dust –

can’t comprehend my own demise.

 

 

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