Poem May 25, 1968 Issue

CONTINUING DRAMA

Neil Millar

Death spares us not a challenge, gains release
From no reluctant duty, stern indenture;
There's neither flight nor conquest in decease;
To die is not "an awfully big adventure."^{Peter Pan by James M. Barrie.}

Death has no terror, is not preordained:
It is a fraud, a specious counterfeit,
A play-within-a-play, and doubly feigned:
We do not see it through: we see through it.

Only an audience with dazzled eyes
Grieves when, on stage, a skillful actor "dies."
The curtain falls; the fallen actors rise.

Outside the darkened theater of sense,
In Life's perfection, Spirit's permanence,
There is no dying—even in pretense.

Neil Millar

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