A Death

A Death
 
Upon the blazing pyre
a fortunate man
has crossed the fence of Time.
 
Between these two lives—
the river’s near shore
and the far—
how thin is the parting?
Slowly, with weariness shed,
he leaves behind a tired body,
arriving, stern and naked,
into Eternity.
 
Yet upon a corpse
how long the memories cling:
kinship, love,
the illusions of possession—
son, daughter, beloved,
greed, fear, objects
of fragile delight.
 
The dreams of decades,
the old chronicles,
still flow along mind’s corridor—
a lamp-lit table,
a hidden photograph,
a book left in an iron cupboard,
its margin marked red
beneath a line,
still quivering with unrest.
 
Customs, unquestioned faiths,
the logic he obeyed,
affections, intoxications,
the lattice of truth and falsehood,
the codified laws he lived by,
the methods of survival he practiced—
all dissolve.
 
Yet in him remained
a vast expanse:
an infinite storehouse,
an unwritten novel
of knowledge, of experience.
 
And all of it
is erased—
within a single death.