Ovi Magazine : "Demise" by Jan Sand

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"Demise"
by Jan Sand
2008-08-29 09:06:16

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It is quite conventional
And not at all contentional
To rage against the age when we decay.
For the progress of the regress
Generates the anger to express
Our grief and our powerful dismay.

One by one all the incisors
Succumb to the advisors
That excision is the desired way.
Then the molars follow suit
For a lot of dental loot
To finish us as toothless as a jay.

We are soon bereft of hair,
Fallen out, I can't say where
To give our tops the surface of a ball.
We retain our brows and lashes
While our shaving still leaves gashes
So Our hairlessness is not complete at all.

Our muscles get much weaker
And our macho very meeker
While our memories are never very sound.
We totter and we twitter
'Til we need a senior sitter
And finally we tumble to the ground.

Let us hope the end is calm
Not a quirk, not a qualm
When we slip into our final dreamless sleep.
Let's be blessed with no recall,

No memory at all
And no problems with counting endless sheep.

Poetry

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Emanuel Paparella	2008-08-29 18:16:43
Epicurus and Lucretius on Death Epicurus: Letter to Menoeceus (excerpt) (1) Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the absence of all awareness. (2) Therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. (3) For there is nothing fearful in living for those who thoroughly grasp that there is nothing fearful in not living. (4) Foolish, therefore, is the person who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. (5) Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we exist death is not present, and when death is present we do not exist. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer. (6) People sometimes shun death as the greatest of all evils, but at other times choose it as a respite from the evils in life. But the wise person neither deprecates life nor does he fear its ending. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is death regarded as an evil. But just as he chooses the pleasantest food, not simply the greater quantity, so too he enjoys the pleasantest time, not the longest. (continued below)


Emanuel Paparella	2008-08-29 18:17:23
(7) And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. (8) Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words are foolishness, for those who hear them will not believe him.


Sand	2008-08-29 18:24:56
Epicurus, of course, denied the gods totally and was an atheist.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-08-29 18:58:37
Point proven. Thank you.


Sand	2008-08-29 19:38:47
The point being, of course, that it is not necessary to either consider counting sheep into eternity nor to cringe before imaginary gods either before or after death.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-08-29 20:06:27
The missed point being, rather, that Epicurean rationalism devoid of the imaginative and the poetic is mere propaganda for atheism even when it presents itself dressed in Lucretian verses, and that there is no need to re-invent a rationalistic stratagem devised two thousand years ago.


Sand	2008-08-29 20:52:58
As has been reiterated over and over again, your taste in poetry is about equal to your ability to reason. And considering your level of perception you will probably take that as a compliment.


Emanuel Paparella	2008-08-30 02:08:27
Has been reiterated by whom? The voices in your head?