after reading Japanese death poems
I am against death,
not dying, exactly,
but death,
the way we do it.
We don’t do death,
death does us.
Death is not a temporary inconvenience,
certainly not for the deceased.
When it’s over, mourners want to get
in the fast check-out lane at the funeral home
where no body lives.
We lather death with euphemisms
feigning sleep or rest or passing
as if from one room to the next.
We perfume death with roses
to mask the honest smell.
Evasions of death
ride shotgun in the mind.
until the invasion of death
shoves the body hard against finality.
Then, nothing left but antecedents, which are
now anecdotes told by those who knew us best.
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Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks & Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death,
Compiled and with an Introduction by Yoel Hoffmann (1986)