DEATH
(1990)

by Lauren Cooper
(1964 - 1999)

All that is death
Is the ceasing of breath
And the freezing of passion.
We think it's duty
To call it beauty,
This last, skin-tight, naked fashion.

The head was more fair
when it used to wear
A sweat-band or glitter paint.
No more the devil
We knew in this rebel:
Instead we see, recall, rever a saint.

Yearn for a shoulder
That ceuld turn colder,
Stone lain in death's groove;
We miss that we rued
When in a fiery mood;
We now relent, repent, and self-reprove.

Back at the hall
Where we often fall
Prey to our own brews,
Now here, in a cold
Empty-feeling world
We quench our grief with other blues.

Next day, hungover
By ale, and a lover
Recalled thrashing in anger,
You see what a friend
Love has in this end
While in life it knews a stranger.

Just as we rued
In hungover mood
The scratch and bite and spit,
We now labour in rebirth
Of a now untested love,
Believing that we'll never tire of it.

We never learn
Now not to burn
The candle to the ground.
In life the fretting
Caused our regretting,
And now, no less, the sodden ground.

But death's love's friend -
We love them now the end
Has stilled their hectoring.
In life a stranger:
Mating's well-feared danger -
Is it love's death or birth we are grieving?

Death gives rise
To such sweet lies:
The memories of love
We never bring
With the wedding ring:
The dreams for which we live.