Boney

Oh death, everybody hates you,

Sang Nico Mbarga nicely,

In the almost universal

Habit of personifying death,

Death as a human character

Possessed of a human figure,

However made gloomy, monstrous,

Bony, spooky—god with a job,

Never the top god, few temples,

Old death. Mbarga even makes

You feel a bit of sympathy

For this ostracized character—

If you’re a person it’s no fun

To be disliked by everyone.

You would consider it unfair,

As the ender of suffering,

The bringer of peace and quiet,

Returner of life to being,

To be universally loathed

When in life so many persons

And personifications bring

More misery even than you—

Torture, chronic illness, famine,

Imprisonment—to name a few.

If you ask people, they hate death

For promising to dissolve them,

But death’s true cruelty is grief,

More pain given to the living.