We continue to go about our hum-drum lives while others are suffering loss.
K Morris reading his poem ‘Milk’.
3 Replies
Tag Archives: death
K Morris reading his poem ‘Shadows’.
This poem came to me while sitting in my study. Shadows played upon the walls and brought to mind the impermanence of things. I am visually impaired but can see the play of shadows on my wall, although I cannot read print.
I Dreamed that I was Dead
I dreamed that I was dead.
There was no dread,
Merely a desire
To cross the barbed wire
And escape something or somewhere,
Perhaps despair.
Pressing my hand against the barbed wire, I felt no pain.
No guards came.
I did not cross, for I new I should find
That which I had left behind
– A man locked in his own mind.
Mimnermus in Church by William Cory
That Old Fox
In my bed.
My head
Filled with warm fuzzy thought.
Falling
Into the arms of sleep,
My attention is suddenly caught
By the bark
Of the fox calling
In the dark.
He is my old enemy and friend
And will be with me at the end.
One can pretend
Otherwise
And gaze in mock surprise
When his final bark is heard.
But, in the end
It is that old fox, death, who will have the last word.
Shadows
On such a day, when the winter sun
Casts my shadow upon yonder wall,
It is difficult to recall
That all
This will, one day be done.
In future will some other one, sitting here, and seeing their shadow fall
Upon this self-same wall,
Know that they may not forestall
The night
When dancing shadows are, forever lost from sight.
—
(Written on 3 December 2016, while sitting in my study).
Cryonics
It is a will-o’-the-wisp, followed by the frightened or blind,
Who themselves bind
To the delusion, that the mist does not forever close
Over mouth and nose.
There are few posies for the departed,
Just an idea started
In the mind
Of those who would salvation find
In a deep freeze,
Designed to please
The ego
Of people who fear to go
Down that dark track
From whence none come back
Feather
Shall we speak as though we will go on forever?
I saw a feather
Borne on a summer’s breeze.
It did please
Me
To see
So carefree
A thing
Dance on the balmy air.
The breeze became a gale,
Then came the hail.
The feather
Was by the tempest tossed,
And forever
Lost
In that passing storm.
Conquering the Reaper
A researcher has launched a project to make simulations of the dead a reality. In future, he postulates you could be having breakfast with your spouse then leave for work. However you would not, in fact be eating with your partner but rather a simulation of the dear departed. This, the researcher hopes will enable those left behind to cope better with grief. Ultimately, as the technology improves the line between the living and the dead will become increasingly indistinct.
The article does touch on the dangers of such simulations, the main ones identified being the people left behind finding it easier to converse with the departed (or rather their simulation) rather than connecting with those in the living world. To my mind another risk with simulations of this nature is that rather than assisting the bereaved to move on, they become trapped in a cycle of interactions with the simulated departed spouse or friend. Of course this already happens to some extent, for example the bereaved may keep a photograph of the loved one who has died on a locket and/or a bedside table where it acts as a reminder of former times. However photographs and recordings don’t constitute full emmersion in the personality of the departed, for one is always aware that one is looking at a picture or listening to a recording. How easy to lose one’s grip on reality and come to believe the simulation is, in fact your friend or loved one and to quite literally lose the plot.
For details of the research please visit, (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3935362/Would-bring-dead-spouse-life-VR-Researchers-say-simulations-evolution-bereavement.html).
In my poem “Death is Dead” I imagine a world in which the Grim Reaper has finally been conquered. Is this the world to which we are slowly moving?
Death is Dead
“Funeral orations are no longer spoken.
Death’s scythe is broken.
His tread echoes not
And the graveyard plot
No longer inspires dread,
For death is dead!
The ageless sit.
Some wit
Cracks a joke, but there is no laughter
As after
Countless repetitions, humour palls.
Lothario calls
On his latest conquest.
Going through the motions, he longs for rest,
For all passion has long since gone,
And women’s faces have merged and become as one.
Yet he must carry on and on …
The celebrity’s aplomb
Is frayed.
No longer is attention payed
To her.
People can only stare
Or listen to the same old song
For so long.
Death is no more.
Even the bore
Tires of his own voice
But he has no choice
Other than to bore on
For the reaper has gone
And tedium eternal is in store
For the noble and the whore”.
Requiescat by Matthew Arnold
Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!
In quiet she reposes;
Ah, would that I did too!
Her mirth the world required;
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.
Her cabin’d, ample spirit,
It flutter’d and fail’d for breath.
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty hall of death.
K Morris - Poet 