There’s No Real Refusal to Mourn

In many ways, you don’t die once.
Awareness dies and resurrects,
Sometimes within a few seconds,

But also, you die all the deaths
Accumulating as you live.
You may die them more than your own,

Keenly aware as you’ve been
For them and can’t be for yourself.
That’s a hardship of certain lives,

A frequent proximity, no,
An actual propinquity
With the dyings of the others.

That’s why the persons of such lives,
The nurses, soldiers, and hangmen,
Tend to set talk of death aside.

But those are all the deaths you take
To your grave, the ones you recall.
With luck, you won’t recall at all.

Or, maybe, you’re each every death,
Recollected or not, that dies
Before you die. That can’t be right.