The Dead Time and Again Attract Douglas’s Attempt to Comprehend. . . . What It Is to Be Dead

What isn’t it to be dead,

Other than being alive?

Most of the planet is dead,

Above and below the skin.

Mars may be totally dead,

Mercury, Venus, the Moon—

Even the asteroid belt,

All that powdery rubble

Of organic molecules—

All, for the time being, dead.

Most of what you’ve eaten was dead,

Albeit limned in small lives.

Most of what’s made you has been

Dead, alive, and dead again.

But that isn’t what you meant

By what it is to be dead,

Now, is it? Being, for you,

Would be to be you as you,

Whatever you as you are.

Judging from experience

With people whose bodies died,

It would seem there’s no being

You as you among the dead,

At least not as any one

Persona you’ve ever been.

That’s what it is to be dead,

Beyond not being alive,

To not be a you who can

Reflect on being a you,

Nor a you you could talk to.