a student of death

Is life the incurable disease?

The infant is born howling
and we laugh,
the dead man smiles
and we cry,
resisting the passage,
always resisting the passage,
that turns life
into eternity.

Blake sang alleluluias
on his deathbed.
My own grandmother,
hardly a poet at all,
smiled
as we'd never seen her smile
Before.
Perhaps the dress of flesh
is no more than a familiar garment
that grows looser as one diets
on death
and perhaps we discard it
or give it to the poor in spirit,
who have not learned yet
what blessing it is
to go naked.

Erica Jong