I speak with you today of our own deaths.

Their inevitability, we know

though we resist, not wanting to let go:

Trust me, says the tempting of our enforced

disintegration; and only in faith

may we die with confidence that we'll survive,

each of us being eager to remain

alive, preferably here!



I'm sorry to laugh.

I do not mean to offend you. It is I

at whom I throw my sneer of mockery;

it may well be it is *I* am the most troubled

of our whole congregation.



We'll all die.



We lust for life. It's necessary hope.

Hope.

Hope. We hope, in order to have hope.

Like one who eats in order to hunger

in the wait until the next planned meal;

but what's to plan in uncertain ages?

Those of you of some years will know quite well

that spiritual strength is best sustenance;

and *that* is a virtue; but not its cause.

We must not be motivated by fear

primarily. It is animal of us

to be afraid; thanks to our first parents.

Fear of death is a mire we cannot walk.

Be careful: it will take us down entire.



There are different ways of being absorbed

by Death. There is waste meat, the smell of it,

and soon the look, which we all associate

with other signs of bodily corruption.



Revulsion from remains that were once known

as someone that would hear and talk – at least

they'd chat, even if they wouldn't listen.



Often, that is the way we die, failing

of a sudden, coughing a bit maybe

and then... full stop: a corpse on the furniture,

something to be got rid of, whilst we pose

our grief, paying honours... to our benefit.



In truth, it may be very boring stuff.

One must be patient! the feast will come soon.

`

We pray and prey, or else we're prayed upon,

torn apart by teeth of enemy and friend,

each of us reconstituted dead things.



There is the *sense* of our *resurrection*:

certainty we have lived before, nothing more.

We are orphans of ourselves at such times,

our memories abandoned by our thoughts;

we gurgle and hiss like almost dry siphons --



dissatisfied; knowing there is something

that we cannot know that *is* important.

I have gone that way far too many times.

I couldn't count.



Let it stay untotalled.



There's also a third way.

Loss of consciousness!

in many cases, followed by the flies –

and that is how *we guess* what they assess,

laying their eggs upon the one we loved,

or feared, when it could think and move itself

and be itself, aware of when it *is*,

or *was*, its self no longer *its* but food

for insects; and horror for minds alive still,

the abandoned integrity too close

to being found an illusion for peace.



At other times, faculties return impaired:

crippled refuse; embarrassments; nonsense

to question hope of underlying sense.



And so this third which thirsts for what's aweigh

upon the unquenchable waves, rising, threatening,

a loss no one believes for want of signs,

a sense without an image or speaking voice,

as if, like the soldier who's lost a leg,

but feels it there and looks to find it *is*;

and only that would-be-victim says it's not.

You *had* two legs, it's said; you *have* two legs.

How may do you want to have? Scuttling

upon the ground, is it?

Stand up and walk.



Our dear lord used to tell us that himself.



I have been there, my friends, prostrate, injured

in my head I know my story ends and starts

all over, as if I had just woken

and I am trying to get out of bed



which isn't there. Instead I'm in Fore Street

on the ground tangled in the straps of my burden

people round me asking it I'm well.

I say I am. I slipped.



I did not slip.

I ceased in times, for as long as it took

to fall on to the roadway, which brought me

back to myself, leaving the time fractured

and without anything binding it up.

Now I writhe on a kind of pain, worried

that more breaks will bury me, like sudden

landslides. I may then cease for good.



Perhaps it is for good. I mean all time.



I see you do not comprehend my thoughts.

No. Probably none of you understand.



I have seen out of this world so often.

Too often. I'm trying to communicate

knowledge but shan't take the time that you have.



My friends, try not to be scared of dying.

And do have faith there is another life.







[Elidius is one of the names of one who may have lived at some time after
the Roman period on Scilly, or, as it then seems to have been called,
Ennor. There is no evidence of him apart from the earlier name of St
Helen's island, where it is said he may have been buried, Insula Sancti
Elidii. His feast day is 8th August. Until now he has had no hagiographer. ]









-- 
If you have received from me a bogus email offering passworded files, I do
apologise. It was not I; but I am sorry.
Just delete the horrid thing, please.
And please let me know if it happens again.
It shouldn't happen again but then it shouldn't have happened the first
time.Please blame gmail! and if you have dealings with British Gas and HSBC
and therefore have data about you on their system take heart from knowing
that they accepted that bogus email as reliable