#18 – How to be dead

West Norwood Cemetery is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries. It is located in the London Borough of Lambeth and was originally consecrated in 1837. One of its more famous residents is Mrs Isabella Beeton, whose book ‘Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management’ was a seminal instructional text for middle class housewives in the mid-nineteenth century.

How to be dead 

It takes some getting used to. There’s a knack

to coping with the stillness in your chest. 

The strangeness of the quiet and the lack 

of breath and mood and motion, when at rest. 

It’s not a state to seek before your time -

Lord only knows, we need your kind on earth -

but sure as taxes tax, and poets rhyme, 

your end will come, as certain as your birth. 

But nothingness is tough to contemplate;  

the mixture of relief and doubt and dread. 

Take comfort in your universal fate:

coz hierarchies don’t concern the dead.

It takes some getting used to. There’s a knack

to coping with the quiet and the lack.

LM

Listen to the poem here

Photo credit: Wikipedia