What do the salmon think, trapped in the jaws
Of angler bears? Do yet-untravelled rills
Rush past unblinking eyes as drying gills
Collapse, and unspawned young stain murderous claws?
While squirming in the bloody robin's beak,
Can those earthworms' dark dreams, unrealized,
Flash by whatever earthworms use for eyes?
Would they cry out "Alas!" if they could speak?
Why should there not be terror in the least
Of dying things? Why should deathbed regret
Be sole province of humankind? And yet,
Death's not tragic for unambitious beasts...
Fitting, perhaps, that man's the only one
Who dies pining for things he's left undone.
1 comment:
What a marvelously elegant and contemplative commentary on so elemental a subject as death.
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