Look to the End
September 4, 2008
10 pm

Death, faithful, sober, swift
Seizing sleeping sloths of men
Who squandered untold time adrift
Devouring dreams, never having asked, "and then...?"

Suddenly, one consuming pang of dread:

The revelation of mortality.
The falsehood of security -
Nightmares for all infinity
Swallowing depraved cities -
Absolute terror of calamity!
Men bear full knowledge of verity:

Mortals die, the hour unsaid.

Yet: dread drifts, drowsily, to sleep.
Mortals savor selfish despair, to active diligence -
Merely existing, as though Death doesn't keep
Appointments, as if he came at men's convenience -
As if mortal man had mastered Death!

Men sift listlessly from vain imagination, to petty scheme -
Aroused abruptly by unexpected Death.
Illusions pierced by cataclysmic daylight - too late, to redeem
All the sleepy years of wasted breath!

Men evanesce into stifled dust,
The grave proclaims finality.
For the dead, there is but one reality:
The gold of virtue brings restful prosperity,
The filth of vice: eternal-wanting poverty.
Man's dulled riches vanish, his once-glittering greed and lust,
And he remains: unlived, unwritten to humanity
Stripped even of identity;
For Death came as a stranger, not a friend.

Mortals, therefore, comprehend:
In all things, look to the end.