Death comes in threes
Or so I’ve heard through the ages. This week started with Taylor dying first, then Ed Rubin (Steve’s partner from EHDD in San Francisco), and last Victor Elnecave (one of my Dad’s cousins in Cuba who I haven’t seen for eight years). I took a big sigh with the third one – hoping the cycle is complete for now.
I saw this poem by Jane Hirshfield:
POEM WITH TWO ENDINGS
Say “death” and the whole room freezes–
even the couches stop moving,
even the lamps.
Like a squirrel suddenly aware it is being looked at.
Say the word continuously,
and things begin to go forward.
Your life takes on
the jerky texture of an old film strip.
Continue saying it,
hold it moment after moment inside the mouth,
it becomes another syllable.
A shopping mall swirls around the corpse of a beetle.
Death is voracious, it swallows all the living.
Life is voracious, it swallows all the dead.
neither is ever satisfied, neither is ever filled,
each swallows and swallows the world.
The grip of life is as strong as the grip of death.
(but the vanished, the vanished beloved, o where?)