For Bubbe Esther o'h

This was composed on the passing of my Bubbe Esther. She was a nut-job, but everyone loved her.
The style is too much like that of my favorite author Rabindranath Tagore. If one is going to mimick someone else, at least pick a master. The audience was not particularly receptive to the gist of the work, but it was meaningful to it's author and the few who understood.

O Death!

Patient! Diligent! Profound!

Now, at last, into your firm, unrelenting grasp

We obediently relinquish

One whom we cherish

Recognizing this irony

And yet doing anything and everything to escape

Perhaps prolonging the inevitable, perhaps not

Exhausting our energies

Running from a thing more alive than we will ever be

You remind us of mortality

And ground our spirits when we think too grand of ourselves

In You, the tenses are forgotten

Amidst the changes of an ever-dying universe

Ground to oblivion by its own cadences

Minute specks in this starry turnabout

Humanity in pompous, egotistical vanity

Shaking fists and crying out “No! No! No!”

Clinging to this life

Like stubborn toddlers

Being dragged off to an early bedtime

A welcoming may occur in the rational mind

To understand your warped humor and sometimes laugh along

But in our hearts

The seat of our yearnings

Forgiveness remains hard to imagine

The passage of days salve the wounds of the living

For those already departed, no pain endures

Eons are of no consequence now

O Death!

You arrive at the appointed hour whilst knowing nothing of time!

And in all,

We would readily pardon this callousness

if perchance You, too,

Grieved for another

(March 2003)