[1209] She Speaks of Death

Guest poem sent in by John Beaty <john@>

Oblivion, she said
in a weary voice,
is what is after death.
There is nothing after death
but nothing
and that's all right with me.

It made good scientific sense,
nailed to the cathedral door
of her religious childhood.

And when her husband died
a few years later
oblivion
pinned against eternity
sagged in the middle
and in its folds
sweet disbelief surprised her
and the hope
she hadn't seen the last of him yet.

	-- Barbara Pescan

        from "Morning Watch"

I ran across this poem while looking for something for a morning
service, and it just HIT me so hard. It completely captures (for me,
at any rate) the ambivalence of humanism.

John Beaty

[Martin adds]

I am reminded, too, of the last verse of Clough's "There is no God" (Poem #69):

    And almost everyone when age,
      Disease, or sorrows strike him,
    Inclines to think there is a God,
      Or something very like Him.

though Pescan's tone is a lot more sympathetic than Clough's is.

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