Ere long I shall be fodder for the earth:
My laurels turned to peat; my bones to dust.
Obituarors may well contend my worth,
Their posthumous contumely surely just.
Thrust forth towards life's only certainty,
Yet not a crumb of comfort does it bring,
The earthly but sublime facticity:
A dirge we all are duty-bound to sing.
An unentitled grasp into the void,
As meaning splinters hotly in the hand;
All incidental vestiges destroyed -
Condemned though sat behind the witness stand.
To pass the darkness on suggests no crime
But sentences the blameless for all time.
By L.R. Chapman
from Modern Melancholy, 2014
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