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Choreography of Life and Death

CHOREOGRAPHY of LIFE and DEATH
(Four times I have crossed swords with death up to now!)


The cheerful trumpet of 
Miraculous life,
Imperatively sounded in 
My mother’s life-giving womb,
Heralding with its melodic tune 
Another animation:
MINE!
And as my innocent 
Infantile heart, provoked by
The challenging divine call, 
Started beating tenderly in
The rhythm of the never-dying cosmos
Thus making me 
ALIVE!  

The promising sound was 
Still ringing in my delicate
Ears
Singing the marvelously hopeful song of life,
When the sound of a second trumpet, similar to the first,
Filled with its melancholic tune my tiny world,
Announcing the coming of calamitous death 
Thus
Condemning me to die.

LIFE and DEATH beside me they stood,
Facing each other, 
Tenderly, holding my hands
And claiming me as their child.

Life was the first to whisper into my ears,
Promises so many.
She talked to me about joy, happiness, love and
Procreation,
About thousands of other things that
She would like to offer. 
Only a favor she asked in return;
To be hers and only hers forever! 
-
When death heard all this, didn’t make any sound,
Only sardonically smiled at life first,
And then to me emphatically declared:
“The cup of joy you can never drink before you empty 
that of sorrow, and no matter what life says to you, in the end,
you will be my very own.”
-
That’s the way my trip in this ephemeral world began,
With vigorous life, leading and tracing the promising way,
And death kept following her, just a few steps behind
Patiently, was waiting to catch up with her pace,
But, 
As years, were passing fast one after the other,
Death was approaching rapidly each, and every day.
So the fight they had begun so many years ago,
Relentless war now becomes, with life still the
Winner.

Yet, the ill-fated date, unexpectedly, came to my great surprise, 
When the cold hands of death I felt around my skeleton waist,
Squeezing the life out of me with all their force and main.
Eager to extinguish in me wished, the very last spark of life,
And as the shrilling wind of death was howling throughout 
My body, I fell at once breathless, dead and
Still over the ground remained!

© Demetrios Trifiatis
       2 February 2013

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