Death is a cold, silent void; a wordless story.

[MorGrendel]

Maybe it is the rain or the fact I have to make a third trip to the dentist that has me in this dower mood. Or maybe it is that need to study for finals and as church name after church name, St. Etienne or St. Pierre, runs through my head, all I can think about is St. Aiden’s melee practice. I’m not even sure I’m fit to fight. My head still isn’t 100% from two weeks ago, and I’ve got a busted tooth, and yet still I’ll go.

No hesitation, no doubt.

. . . Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
-An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, William Butler Yeats

Death waits inside us for a door to open.
Death is patient as a dead cat.
Death is a doorknob made of flesh.
Death is that angelic farm girl
gored by the bull on her way home
from school, crossing the pasture
for a shortcut. In the seventh grade
she couldn't read or write. She wasn't a virgin.
She was "simpleminded," we all said.
It was May, a time of lilacs and shooting stars.
She's lived in my memory for sixty years.
Death steals everything except our stories.
-Larson's Holstein Bull, Jim Harrison

To not go is to not write my story.
To waste the blood spilled in the past.
I do not go for my own glory,
Without the fight, how long will I last?

These halcyon days, these quick years,
Our battles alive, but death in between,
When will it end, the great warrior fears.
Without context, what does my story mean?

I’m more than a plumed helmet on a svelte frame.
Death may be a Greek statue; but a faceless kore.
A forgotten grave marker with no name,
Death is a cold, silent void; a wordless story.
-Mor Grendel