And argued fiercely with that strict “you must”;
The long debate from day to day
Wound slowly on its pointless way
Though now the consequences are but dust.
I
think of him struck speechless late at night
As
every nerve and limb rebelled in fright;His brooding on the charnel worm,
As active as a common germ,
Was like a tooth which hurt him at each bite.
But
worse was fury at the blank unbeing
Which
stalked his spirit on the point of fleeing:How could the creature muse upon
The moment when it was undone,
When all the world would turn without his seeing?
Some
had proposed that death – unbroken sleep –
Was
not an ogre over which to weep;But Hobbes could not avoid the thought
That all such thinkers had been bought,
That theirs were promises they could not keep.
And
yet, the decades pass above his grave,
As
lazy and as gentle as a wave;His dust, grown humble in the soil,
Rests from its relentless toil,
Where marigolds and alyssum behave.
Death
may be life ingathered in the Lord,
A
timeless pulse within the timeless hoard;But in the air above his mound
The celebrating jays go round –
Their cry a comment on the sheathèd sword.
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© June 1980