“Can Art Exist without Death?” –K. Touchstone 1993
It is false that for all one knows one will never die.
All animals are mortal, and we know that.
Puff away any element of the psyche not accepting its mortality;
get with the program of reality four square and full weight, full kinship.
Our ancestors died, you are going to die, I am going to die, . . .
and we know that rationally, including scientifically.
“Would Immortality Be Worth It?” – S. Hicks 1992
“Vegetative Robots and Value” – S. Boydstun*
**_All Along_**
Become some reason, then all along,
beneath each chant, arch, trance, and tear,
was known
stop-still of life, the end, no more,
no something, no place, no passage. (SB – Oct. 2021)
**_Carriage_**
The strings of the harp
return to silence.
Gone voices echo
through living chambers.
Gone brows again rise,
gone but for your love.
Mind-crossed strides new-bless
your priceless carriage. (SB – November 2019)
**_After all_**
the you or me and we
are stop, still, done, away:
all rush the world old play,
their rise, breathe, love their be,
their arms, words, eyes hold dawn,
race noon, bold burn their turn:
all rush the world old play,
their rise, breathe, love their be. (SB – January 2019)
**_Breath, Death_**
Ripples of stream and stone
romance you.
You, breathing and climbing,
you, earth’s courage,
you, ripples of thought.
Grappling, singing,
we wind our clocks,
we together waking, walking,
in life under death. (SB – April 2023)
**_Once_**
Against all hours, days, devisings,
radiant axe and warming fire:
Pulse and grasp cease you. You stillness
gone from streams of light, space and time,
gone to snow once touched your flushed face,
to crester-stone once glanced the pond,
to pond, its laps of shore, their sum,
to ice ceiling once you stood upon,
to sky once above all your loves. (SB – July 2023)