Death

From the archives:

24th January 2008

Yesterday my work at the computer was interrupted by loud noises from outside – firecrackers banged, drums were beaten, trumpets sounded - a procession! I grabbed my camera and ran to the balcony. There they came – all men.

Suddenly, our housekeeper was beside me …. “No photograph. It is for the dead.”

Into view came a bier with flower-laden canopy – this was a funeral. I held my camera respectfully by my side as they walked by.

Yesterday, 15th February, I came across this moving poem in the group I run on flickr. It had been used by Dinesh together with an old family photograph of his father. I wanted to keep a note of the poem and this seems an appropriate place for it:

"Father, since always now the death to come
Looks naked out from your eyes into mine,
Almost it seems the death to come is mine
And that I also shall be overcome,
Father, and call for breath when you succumb,
And struggle for your hand as you for mine
In hope of comfort that shall not be mine
Till for the last of me the angel come.
But, father, though with you in part I die
And glimpse beforehand that eternal place
Where we forget the pain that brought us there.
Father, and though you go before me there,
Leaving this likeness only in your place
Yet while I live, you do not wholly die."

~ Donald Justice, 1925-2004 ~
"Sonnet to my Father"