Aging in Beauty’s Age of Death

Blowing out candles every year,
Blowing them out like they mean nothing,

”Tomorrow won't exist
If I don't acknowledge
Its presence.”

What you do every day
Does not consciously
Decide to continue.

As if continuing is a choice
We make every year;
As if it will allow us some
Privilege to take Death
As politely as it takes us.

That taking advantage of
The opportunity to tell
Death that it has not
Yet succeeded is itself a privilege—

Who can say whether
Death succeeds or fails?

How many things are
Exactly what they seem to be?
How many moments wasted?
How many deaths have already occurred in those
    who are alive?

Really looking at the data,
There are precious few who still seem alive,
But their numbers seem ample enough to reflect
The significance they hold.

Many hope and attempt to
Elucidate what is incommunicable.

There are those who wish to share joy,
But that joy may no longer be the appropriate emotion.

Pain and mutual suffering are often the reality.
Pain, and the desire for others not to have to feel it—
Pain is the thing that makes it all seem real.
Pain is the medium through which the message
    draws its significance.

Without pain, the message loses its vigor.
Without the pain, the interpreter cannot
    understand.

So the stars will always have a story,
And, if not, at least a shape. So that if
You ever find yourself lost and looking up at them,
That you will feel just a little bit less alone.

There have always been
Sufferers like you,
Though you may not know
You met them
    in the street,
they were there.

Tomorrow you will learn of another one;
Yesterday you forgot one you knew.

Some choose to remember
    all they can,
Some would like more than anything
    to forget.

Those who chose to remember
Are burdened with their own weight,
And the weight of those who have forgotten.

But time must remember all in some way.

Generations may stand apart and defy one another,
But there is a constant pressure from Beauty:

That She be interpreted,
And that She give her interpreters the illusion
That She proceeds from them,
And not the other way around