I CAN NOT BE CYNICAL

I can not be cynical about death,

It comes too often

Yet it comes one at a time.

Old men and women look at death

As in a mirror reflecting

Life gone by, fancies unfulfilled,

Or better, dreams turned real

Through memory’s prism.

Young men and women face death

As a window shuttered

Against future fantasies

And hope lost to dark eternity.

I can not be cynical about death

It comes whether I will it or not

Treading the secret stair

With silken slippers unaware

That I feel the shuffle

Of earth upon my eyes

Covered now in sleep

And soon in wakeless slumber.