“Death, be not Proud” is a stupid fucking poem
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
~ John Donne
K, so a couple things here. First and foremost, fuck John Donne. Second, this poem is supposedly about resilience (it being a poem its meaning is open to interpretation because blah blah art blah dude you just don’t get it blah blah it’s a schooner blah) which is a word and topic I have grown to loathe. What kind of an attribute is “resilience?” Kevlar is “resilient.” Why? Because you can shoot at it a lot of times and it will protect whatever is on the other side from dying. Most of the time. Whatever is on the other side of said hail of bullets will not be in a great mood and will generally suffer a great deal of internal damage but that is, at least ostensibly, better than catching a bullet raw dog. So now we’re defining something “resilient” as something that is capable of surviving calamitous and otherwise fatal damage without itself being destroyed. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, as it were. But what kind of shape is that “resilient” something after said damage? Repeated bouts with said damage? We never examine the aftermath of “resilience.” We only wipe our brows and say “whew! Could have been worse!” We never stop and think that just because something could be worse does not mean that something is good. We never pick up that Kevlar vest and ask it how it’s feeling afterward. We just thank it for its service and move on, unscathed, and let the efforts shown by the resilience of the Kevlar be an example to us of what not to do. Because who really would choose to be resilient?
Christ I can’t find it. The hell with it!
