MY FEET HAD COME TO THE END OF THE WORLD.
"What...is this...'place'?"
I hear myself ask.
"It is Death."
I hear my self answer.
Myself and my self
have become separate entities.
Death is a 'place.'
I've got to stop thinking of it as that.
Sans space...sans time.
The day fades
as night sets fire to the sky.
This sunset( so to speak )
is sent to offer me comfort.
It does not exist.
It is a scrap of memory
that has somehow
survived.
I watch its 'world' like a film
with the sound turned down.
I watch my atoms
recombine
to give me some semblance
of who I am.
Or rather - who I was.
So. There is no God.
That is good to know.
Nor no - Heaven either.
Only this 'Hell' of not knowing
who or where
the hell I am.
Death, it seems is only
a beginning.
I re-sculpt my face
at this molecular level
in order to hang on to
who I used to be but
it is like living in 2-D
a me that's not-me.
Forgetting who I was
I must accept who
I am now
and only then
it dawns that "Yes,
yes...Death is. . ."
It was the trope of Heaven as was expected...White bearded Big Guy etc., that didn't materialise. He survived his dying so to speak and this was his experience.
My own experience was one of the pain that passeth all understanding and at the instant where no more pain could fit into my tiny mind...the pain transformed into absolute bliss...the world simply fell away into nothingness.
But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.
Spring Offensive
BY WILFRED OWEN