Some Friends Tell Me About Death

One of my best friends gave me a book of A.E. Housman's poetry one New Year's. This was surprising, given the fact that he's one of the most no-nonsense, logical people I know and poetry has never been his bag. But in the inscription he drew my attention to this poem - if you read it quickly, it just seems like your typical carpe diem crap of living for right now.


But really it's a giving in to the inevitable, the realization that like Springsteen said, "Everything dies, baby, that's a fact." It's a beautiful thing - Donald Hall wrote, "It is fitting / and delicious to lose everything." I'm not part of the unconquerable soul crowd, I think it's just delusional. Every soul gets conquered - to quote Dylan, "It might be the Devil / Or it might be the Lord / But you're gonna have to serve somebody." Rather than denying and turning away, here's something to help you on the long journey everybody makes towards accepting the incomprehensible. 


To quote the inimitable William Shatner, "You're gonna die."

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now"

A.E. Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.