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I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
CHUANG TSE
I
My coffin should be my cocoon,
The chrysalis of all my life-long labour;
My shroud of basest sack-cloth
Should burst from out that pupal wooden box
As wings of finest ermine
In a silken flutter, fettered to my form,
My effigy. Behold!
My metamorphosis, my glorious death!
II
I will meet the moon,
Will fall with grace upon Death’s certain sabre.
For here I am a black moth;
I do not fly but tumble, give walls knocks,
Fall, and then determine
To pull myself back up and chase the warm,
The elusive lights of gold.
Come day, the bulb is spent: I lie beneath.
III
I dwell in darkness here,
Call Somnus to my aid so very oft
I hardly live at all,
Yet do not wish this world away from me –
Indeed there is no man
Has loved this real realm quite so well as I.
But if beyond lay new life
Then Death would be divested of his sting.
IV
Think not that I refer
To some unlikely state of spirits soft,
Which float, when bodies pall,
Above the stratosphere to dwell in glee.
Imagine, if you can,
A life unseen, unfelt; born when we die.
We cannot know this true life,
Lived longer than poor nature’s offering.
V
Our purpose is this term,
The life bestowed on us by other men,
Who keep our memory,
Who read our words, rethink our thoughts and dreams,
A life reflecting glory
Far back to bathe the meagre truth we lived.
This life is my desire;
Beyond the grassy teeth, the yawning ground.
VI
I shall not fear the worm
If bookworms of tomorrow track my pen.
But cast your breathing eye:
The canon of the nameless bursts its seams.
How fair the flight from story,
How simple sliding nowhere, to be sieved,
To sink in obscurity’s mire,
To blink, and slink from life without a sound.
VII
We sit, hang fire and watch
The winters wither all our augured worth.
I have done the same.
No more. For I wage war on Lethe’s wave.
No more. I shall not spiral
Or flutter blindly like the moth in shadows.
I do not run to death,
His kiss come soon would set my plans awry.
VIII
But if at last I hatch,
If those cold lips should blow, bestow new birth,
Draw forth those wings of flame,
Afresh I’d bloom, from out a fertile grave.
Life’s life is only viral,
Repetitive and bland: In matchless meadows
Death’s at last draws breath –
And there with grace I glide, a butterfly.
Samuel Reed
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