And They Don'T Ask…

And they don't ask: What comes after death? Though more intimate with the book of Paradise than with accounts of the earth, they're preoccupied with another question: What shall we do before this death? Near to life, we live and we don't - as if life were parceled out from a desert where the haggling gods of property settle their disputes. We live beside an ancient dust. Our lives burden the historian's night: 'Though I make them disappear, they come back to me from absence.' Our lives burden the artist: 'I draw them and become one of them, veiled in mist.' Our lives burden the General: 'How can a ghost still bleed?' We shall be what we want to be. And we want a bit of life, not for just anything - but to honor the resurrection after our death. Unintentionally, they speak the philosopher's words: 'Death means nothing to us: if we are then he isn't. Death means nothing to us: if he is then we are not.' And they have rearranged their dreams and sleep standing.