Sep 22, 2014 Original Poetry

What Words?

©September 22^nd, 2014

By Vijaya Sundaram

What words can we say

When a young person dies,

When anyone dies?

 

I’m so sorry doesn’t cut it.

Deep sympathies doesn’t, either.

 

The world rushes by, myopic

And meaningless,

While a mother and a father,

And a sibling or two

Stand, bewildered, static

Amidst a whirl of meaningless

Heartfelt chatter, while

The patter of feet

Come in and out,

And death stands

Eternally by their side,

Silent, spare, sorrowing.

 

Death comes with quiet foot

Or a skid of tyres

Death comes with a twist of fate

Or the twist of a knife

Death creeps up and stings

Or bites down hard

On a fatal vein.

Death blooms, red and angry

In one’s blood and slashes

Left and right, clearing a

Path only it knows.

Sometimes, there’s pain,

Sometimes, a flash,

Then, nothingness.

So, I imagine it.

 

What if it isn’t any of these?

What if it’s the eternal squeeze

Of life, oozing out toothpaste-like,

Pain so piercing

There are no words,

Just living it, crying,

Living the dying:

THAT has to be

The apex of agony.

 

Would dying be easy?

Would I want to go, unresisting?

No!  I’d say, give me one more chance

Just one more!

I promise I’ll do it right this time.

And a remorseless Judge

Would say, Yea or Nay.

 

Of course, that’s if you believe.

What if you don’t?

What would you say, then?

 

Better to be scattered

Atoms of one’s self

Entering into the inmost

Secrets of existence.

I’d say.

 

Better to be photons

Better to become

Lighter than air

And ascend.

And descend,

And ascend again

And again, that ladder

From DNA to Death.

 

To feel is a curse.

Lift that curse,

I want to say, and yet,

I cling to it, for it

Is all I know, for it

Is all that any of us

Will ever know we know.

 

And so, we say,

I’m so sorry

Because, somewhere, hidden,

Our blood-cells know

About this remorseless

Yet familiar stranger,

Death.

 

And we grieve

For the living,

For ourselves,

Once the dead

Have fled.

 

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Tags: #Life, #Loss, DNA, Dying, Living, photons, Words in the face of Death