and breath to breath

I have death on my mind a bit right now. A victim of cancer has recently passed, struck down at a young age. Younger than I remember being. There is a poem from WWI that I have often used for comfort when examining mortality. "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger.

I have been wondering why this poem eases my mind so, and now discovered what it is within me that needs these words. The narrator of the piece acknowledges his pending death. He accepts it, maybe even looks forward to it in the way one might look forward to the end of a long journey. There is no fear of death, not where there is acceptance that it will happen by deaths own design. You are as impotent to the cold hand of mortality as even the lowest insects. It is coming for you, and when it arrives you stand and face it.

Since nothing can be done for it, instead spend your worries on the task of being alive. Fill your life with as much living as possible. You may have less sand in the glass than you know.

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air—

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

 

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

 

God knows 'twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear ...

But I've a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.