Never is a bitter cold so felt as betrayal. A knife in the back, an assault from within, the betrayal of a friend. Yet betrayal itself is betrayed, for he who betrayal slays is not worthy of the loss. For to him who is worthy of betrayal, what legend enthrones him but a stone to mark his grave? A single line in the song of a greater tale to tell? But glory embalms the corpse who is cut from life before the time for death comes on deserved.
When tragedy purchases valor in our hearts, we call it glorious. But what of the corpse rotting fast and cold? Even a death of glory is in the end only another meal in secret for worms. What greatness is preserved except for the living who one day in kind will last no more whether due or not for that final hour? What death is glorious then? And what end is timely upon a year of its passing? We are only glad to have it past or miserable in its embrace. Graves and songs alike are lifeless and cause dead men to no more rightly bleed than bravely loft among the stars. The turn of hades key makes a mockery of both; jeering at might to pity cowardice, and whistling through darkness to conjure false light.
Yet it is in death we see our greatest aid for it avoids no man and speaks to all to tell of the forlorn father's woe, dreaded and felt as no man could fathom or fold by examination of his own death through courage, ignorance, or treachery. It is in death that ringing bells toll truth to both calm and embitter, attack and entreat us with a fear beyond all fearful concern. For who can concern an unknown realm to his reason? There is neither up, down, left, right, or backwards. Where the destiny is certain, the nature and state are absent. Happy or dreadful to imagine, death is not in our fancies, but our future. And the toll of death ushers a state we do not understand and will never fully know until we taste it.
Death perplexes not because we understand its tiding song, but because it tasks all shivering sick to think of what to them is deepest nothing. And death is like nothing to us because we cannot know it and live. Thus to know death and to understand death are separate pursuits. (And death perhaps can be even lived if we were to understand it fully, but that is perhaps a further point to be pursued in another setting where more than the extremity and meaning of death itself are in question.)
But is that not the goal of death at last? And not on terms we would attribute to the reasonability of a man's feelings about death, for death itself is ultimate objectivity for man's state of life, if ever there was a standard to gauge it. Death is whatever it is. And it stands as an unavoidable god whether men worship or ignore it. Unlike awe at the expanse of stars, oceans vast, and ranges great with ice and snow, where wonder rests encased in senses fit to fix them with a lyre's song, death is not so patient to define itself by movements, gilded colors, and patterns disappearing to be seen, but like a void erasure harkens to ensnare, death's only relative is darkness though it wears it as a crown. It is glossed perhaps by our sense of boredom with the undefined, and we connect fanciful glows and dreadful smokes to give it behavior and attributes. But death is wholely unknowable and as elusive as the devil is of truth.
Yet in spite of this is death in fact a thing created like the Serpents loss of limb. All creation bathes within death's light. Yet since it is itself among creation, death is not so bold to stand above all else. Death speaks loud with heritage and lasts itself as sign that life is no more servant unto death than a king to a rich man. But often would a man of rich heritage or wealth attempt to sway even the king for such a season as our own, and so at sight of death, we often tempt ourselves to fix with heavy hearts and focus all our pity on the lost and perished tokens of our place as son and daughter to the kingdom; hoping some eventual rest from politics in heaven's war on hell we care so little as its peasants to entreat (apart from revolts over food gone bad in the service of whatever great war we are pre-enlisted to starve in service of).
Yet even in bad faith a world with downward turns and attempted glories in the face of snares of entropic wist, can be undone. For at the birth of death lies our speech's heart and our stance's ground. No garbled mishap or sonnet's song could shift the weight of blood that sphinctered hope and wrapped death in robe and cloth upon the hour of its breath. None could bear that child except the father of its dreadful form. That father also bore the child who was to drink from every cup poured full to the lips and drained to the last. For every sip and sup of man in death showed glory's unrequited rest and treachery's bitter justice, until the theme of life's demand on death to shine of more than emptiness required death itself to tell the tale of hope that brought it kicking, bleeding, living at its mother's breast to suck what life it could from milk to shepherds care. One bite of the master's sheep and the wolf is known; one night of terror and the wolf pursued; one sheep devoured and the wolf is judged; one shepherds sword and the wolf disemboweled to its grave where even lore of its demise is stricken dead in glory's hall of giants past.
There is hope indeed for life in valleys shadowed by death, for in the darkness prowls the shepherd, yea in all creation stalking after signals of the grip of death's great verity and void. Demon, legion, beast, and man have hope to know and tell the tale of him for whom they live, if in the folds of darkness lies a single strain of him who light enfolds in life. And every hold has hope to tell us more of him who stands to undermine whatever grip has left us dead in our expenses and our falsely claimed escape. Even Demons can be loudest. Every creature; even death.
When tragedy purchases valor in our hearts, we call it glorious. But what of the corpse rotting fast and cold? Even a death of glory is in the end only another meal in secret for worms. What greatness is preserved except for the living who one day in kind will last no more whether due or not for that final hour? What death is glorious then? And what end is timely upon a year of its passing? We are only glad to have it past or miserable in its embrace. Graves and songs alike are lifeless and cause dead men to no more rightly bleed than bravely loft among the stars. The turn of hades key makes a mockery of both; jeering at might to pity cowardice, and whistling through darkness to conjure false light.
Yet it is in death we see our greatest aid for it avoids no man and speaks to all to tell of the forlorn father's woe, dreaded and felt as no man could fathom or fold by examination of his own death through courage, ignorance, or treachery. It is in death that ringing bells toll truth to both calm and embitter, attack and entreat us with a fear beyond all fearful concern. For who can concern an unknown realm to his reason? There is neither up, down, left, right, or backwards. Where the destiny is certain, the nature and state are absent. Happy or dreadful to imagine, death is not in our fancies, but our future. And the toll of death ushers a state we do not understand and will never fully know until we taste it.
Death perplexes not because we understand its tiding song, but because it tasks all shivering sick to think of what to them is deepest nothing. And death is like nothing to us because we cannot know it and live. Thus to know death and to understand death are separate pursuits. (And death perhaps can be even lived if we were to understand it fully, but that is perhaps a further point to be pursued in another setting where more than the extremity and meaning of death itself are in question.)
But is that not the goal of death at last? And not on terms we would attribute to the reasonability of a man's feelings about death, for death itself is ultimate objectivity for man's state of life, if ever there was a standard to gauge it. Death is whatever it is. And it stands as an unavoidable god whether men worship or ignore it. Unlike awe at the expanse of stars, oceans vast, and ranges great with ice and snow, where wonder rests encased in senses fit to fix them with a lyre's song, death is not so patient to define itself by movements, gilded colors, and patterns disappearing to be seen, but like a void erasure harkens to ensnare, death's only relative is darkness though it wears it as a crown. It is glossed perhaps by our sense of boredom with the undefined, and we connect fanciful glows and dreadful smokes to give it behavior and attributes. But death is wholely unknowable and as elusive as the devil is of truth.
Yet in spite of this is death in fact a thing created like the Serpents loss of limb. All creation bathes within death's light. Yet since it is itself among creation, death is not so bold to stand above all else. Death speaks loud with heritage and lasts itself as sign that life is no more servant unto death than a king to a rich man. But often would a man of rich heritage or wealth attempt to sway even the king for such a season as our own, and so at sight of death, we often tempt ourselves to fix with heavy hearts and focus all our pity on the lost and perished tokens of our place as son and daughter to the kingdom; hoping some eventual rest from politics in heaven's war on hell we care so little as its peasants to entreat (apart from revolts over food gone bad in the service of whatever great war we are pre-enlisted to starve in service of).
Yet even in bad faith a world with downward turns and attempted glories in the face of snares of entropic wist, can be undone. For at the birth of death lies our speech's heart and our stance's ground. No garbled mishap or sonnet's song could shift the weight of blood that sphinctered hope and wrapped death in robe and cloth upon the hour of its breath. None could bear that child except the father of its dreadful form. That father also bore the child who was to drink from every cup poured full to the lips and drained to the last. For every sip and sup of man in death showed glory's unrequited rest and treachery's bitter justice, until the theme of life's demand on death to shine of more than emptiness required death itself to tell the tale of hope that brought it kicking, bleeding, living at its mother's breast to suck what life it could from milk to shepherds care. One bite of the master's sheep and the wolf is known; one night of terror and the wolf pursued; one sheep devoured and the wolf is judged; one shepherds sword and the wolf disemboweled to its grave where even lore of its demise is stricken dead in glory's hall of giants past.
There is hope indeed for life in valleys shadowed by death, for in the darkness prowls the shepherd, yea in all creation stalking after signals of the grip of death's great verity and void. Demon, legion, beast, and man have hope to know and tell the tale of him for whom they live, if in the folds of darkness lies a single strain of him who light enfolds in life. And every hold has hope to tell us more of him who stands to undermine whatever grip has left us dead in our expenses and our falsely claimed escape. Even Demons can be loudest. Every creature; even death.
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