One of my early poems about death, written in October 1980, featured one of my most-admired philosophers, Plotinus - the greatest of the Neo-Platonists. Its title, "Try to Bring Back the God in You to the Divine in the All," is a quotation of Plotinus's final words on his deathbed. I posted it on 19 July 2012 and it is linked here. A more recent poem on the subject is "A Shop Doorway," written in September 2014 and posted here on 12 July 2018.
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When Chance discovered
What’s organic, in fact it
Discovered Death. For
Life is Process: started, there’s
No dodging Newton’s fiat –
Lacking self’s being,
Process must burn itself up
And, cindered, return
To unlife, mere particules
Inert in Space-time’s dredgings.
Think: from Conception’s
“Now,” each thing that lives – creature,
Plant – though first it grow
In spades, complexing itself
That a fine-tuned entity
Result, at one with
World and task, is fraughtly skid
On an escapeless
Scarp, recycling energy
Until, like a sucked-out shell,
Shrugged by life’s forces,
Which leach to a younger host,
And strengthless to feed,
Its “thisness” that’s unique slumps
To miasma, Death’s last breath.
That’s a fate includes
Even the self-aware – us:
Surely knowledge, though,
Should disabuse of skin’s creep,
Mind’s tremor, at End’s beckon?
Heidegger teaches
That Death’s finis in itself
Gifts not nulls meaning,
Exerting limit which duns
Effort, outcome, to effect:
But that’s mere whistling –
The condemned man’s petrified
Faced with unbeing!
And even bed-death is hard –
Its cancers and infections!
Truth, some affect shrugs,
Others will shiver, but all
One can do is wait
That unlimbing loneliness
For who knows the place or hour?
Might faith help? It claims
Knowledge of our embodied
Wilderment, its rapt
And final homing, barring
Sin’s free-willed choices which damn.
All depends: does Chance
Or God have the monarchy?
Hints glint like dust motes
In light, but all that’s assured
Is Death’s grin: the rest is hope.
====================
© April - May 2024
What’s organic, in fact it
Discovered Death. For
Life is Process: started, there’s
No dodging Newton’s fiat –
Lacking self’s being,
Process must burn itself up
And, cindered, return
To unlife, mere particules
Inert in Space-time’s dredgings.
Think: from Conception’s
“Now,” each thing that lives – creature,
Plant – though first it grow
In spades, complexing itself
That a fine-tuned entity
Result, at one with
World and task, is fraughtly skid
On an escapeless
Scarp, recycling energy
Until, like a sucked-out shell,
Shrugged by life’s forces,
Which leach to a younger host,
And strengthless to feed,
Its “thisness” that’s unique slumps
To miasma, Death’s last breath.
That’s a fate includes
Even the self-aware – us:
Surely knowledge, though,
Should disabuse of skin’s creep,
Mind’s tremor, at End’s beckon?
Heidegger teaches
That Death’s finis in itself
Gifts not nulls meaning,
Exerting limit which duns
Effort, outcome, to effect:
But that’s mere whistling –
The condemned man’s petrified
Faced with unbeing!
And even bed-death is hard –
Its cancers and infections!
Truth, some affect shrugs,
Others will shiver, but all
One can do is wait
That unlimbing loneliness
For who knows the place or hour?
Might faith help? It claims
Knowledge of our embodied
Wilderment, its rapt
And final homing, barring
Sin’s free-willed choices which damn.
All depends: does Chance
Or God have the monarchy?
Hints glint like dust motes
In light, but all that’s assured
Is Death’s grin: the rest is hope.
====================
© April - May 2024
