Is Life the Incurable Disease?

Is life the incurable disease?

The infant is born howling

and we laugh,

the dead man smiles

and we cry,

resisting the passage,

aways resisting the passage,

that turns life

into eternity.

 

Blake sang alleluias

on his deathbed.

My own grandmother,

hardly a poet at all,

smiled

as we'd never seem her smile

before.

Perhaps the dress of flesh

is no more than a familiar garment

that grows looser as one diets

on death, and perhaps we discard it

or give it to the poor in spirit,

who have not learned yet

what blessing it is

to go naked.

                    Erica Jong