Friday, June 25, 2021

Memento Mori


 In the face of death 

Alive with fiery breath,

We live all the more spectacularly 

 In an attempt to escape the inevitable

survive miraculously

Sometimes to embrace it without fear.

In lonesome fear, never sure why you're here


The nature and process of death

Deities associated with death,

 Either because they are death or because they look after death

One of the central concerns 

most religious traditions,

 philosophical schools, 

 mythological tales.




Memento Mori -Remember, you shall die, 

To be born is to die

To say goodbye

Hence Carpe Diem -Seize the day, 

That, granting life today,

Be bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

 Heaven or from hell?

And do we know

We are but dust and shadow


Celebrating the life of the departed we also acknowledge our own mortality.

The sufferings of mortality,

Seen in their sad reality,



The awareness and engagement with the process of death

Feel Alive with fiery breath,

The sky around  and the earth below.

The hour of death is unknown



We enter into life under pain of death; 

Take a deep breath 

Death is vital to life.

Memento mori

 On your desk, or the skin of your hands as you hold a book, 

We always feel at or behind our shoulder

So is there a moral in this story?


This may not stop us fearing death, or grieving;

Such deep sighs should not be heaving

 These are natural human processes

Vague, dark distress

But it does help us see death as part of a larger story

Memento mori 

And it's glory


The universe that, despite its apparent phenomenal hurtling Towards entropy

 Like an unstoppable juggernaut, 

No matter what 

Also rises up into consciousness.

 It tells us that at every moment this awakening happens,

As matter switches on awareness.

 It tells us that we should live both as though

 We were going on forever and, at the same time, as though 

any moment now we are going to…


Our entry. the world bringing our end

 And, just as we are made of ‘stardust’ 

Every man and every woman is a "star”

The unknown and impossibly large number of minuscule parts

And nothing is ever truly created or destroyed


In my life's twilight

The strange ‘Interzone’

 Where I suddenly know that I am already wiped out of existence and forgotten. 

Yet, somehow, I get back

My awareness is like a loop, a binder, 

Pulled across an abyss, 

Immersed into its final destiny

 I am reborn into Time.

It is a Miracle to find Mum

It is being raised from the dead and returning to the land of the living.

No comments:

Post a Comment