Nothing Does a Lot of Work in Verse

It’s taken humanity

A while to persuade itself

Dead folks don’t come back to life

With some regularity.

You still need some persuading.

You accept death is certain,

But you’re still having trouble

With permanent. The go-to

Suggests it’s to do with death,

Particularly, mortal

Salience, ego’s terror

Of awareness of nothing—

The impossibility

Of knowing what nonbeing

Would be like motivates this.

We’re not so sure. Permanence

Is a problem fantasy

For you in more realms than death.

You want nothing permanent

Unless you say it should be,

And you’re obsessed with changing,

At least in your heads, the way

Change goes. You want it reversed.

You believe in eternal

Verities that cannot change,

While also believing change

Itself can be overturned.

Exactly the opposite

Obtains—everything changes;

No change can be overturned.

Not only death elicits

This weirdly orthogonal

Response of your thoughts to change,

But it’s harder to explain

If not just egocentric.

You don’t want what the world is.