May 10, 2010
 
MANN TALK: The Birth of Death
 
By Perry Mann
 
“‘Tis long till eve and morn or gone: / Slow the endless night comes on, / And late to fullness grows the birth / That shall last as long as earth.” A. E. Housman from The Immortal Part.
 
Death is born on the same day of the birth of everything and everyone. It matures coincidentally with the life it inhabits. When the life goes, death is born.
 
Every day millions are born and millions die. Teenagers rarely consider that they harbor death and that it grows toward its end as the teenagers’ births grow to their end. The end may come early or late---but it comes.
 
But when one is fourscore and ten, he is keenly aware that within him death resides with what life is left to him. And some days it is his friend and some days it is his tiresome neighbor and always it is an inescapable presence, a member of the house that cannot be evicted. So, one sooner or later must make his peace with this member of the family.
 
Man has, way in the past, dealt with his understanding that there is an end to his consciousness. Pagan men had gods and some concept of life after death, a concept to counter the nothingness that death brings. An after life had to be created to ameliorate the awful prospect of life melting into the soil of its birth with finality.
 
Then Jesus came. He taught a morality that is sublime and so challenging that it was necessary to claim that he was a god, for only a god could live by what he taught. Further, there arose hearsay that after he was crucified he arose from the dead and ascended to Heaven; and subsequently there evolved that he died for man’s sins and that whosoever believed in him would have immortal life. No concept has sold so readily as the concept that merely to believe in the Carpenter would assure life after death. Man’s birth partner died on the Cross. At least, the faithful believe so.
 
Few poets have spent more time and words considering death than has A. E. Housman and written more poetically about it. One of greatest on the subject is “The Immortal Part.”

When I meet the morning beam,
 
Or lay me down at night to dream,
 
I hear my bones within my say,
 
‘Another night, another day.
 
 
‘When shall this slough of sense be cast,
 
This dust of thoughts be laid at last,
 
The man of flesh and soul be slain
 
And the man of bone remain?
 
 
‘This tongue that talks, these lungs that shout,
 
These thews that hustle us about,
 
This brain that fills the skull with schemes,
 
And its humming hive of dreams,---
 
 
‘These today are proud in power
 
And lord it in their little hour:
 
The immortal bones obey control
 
Of dying flesh and dying soul.
 
 
‘‘Tis long till eve and morn are gone:
 
Slow the endless night comes on,
 
And late to fullness grows the birth
 
That shall last as long as earth.
 
 
‘Wanderers eastward, wanderers west,
 
Know you why you cannot rest?
 
‘Tis that every mother’s son
 
Travails with a skeleton.
 
 
‘Lie down in the bed of dust;
 
Bear the fruit that bear you must;
 
Bring the eternal seed to light,
 
And morn is all the same as night.
 
 
‘Rest you so from trouble sore,
 
Fear the heat of the sun no more,
 
Nor the snowing winter wild,
 
Now you labor not with child.
 
 
‘Empty vessel, garment cast
 
We that wore you long shall last.
 
Another night, another day.’
 
So my bones within me say.
 
 
Therefore they shall do my will
 
Today while I am master still,
 
And flesh and soul, now both are strong,
 
Shall hale the sullen slaves along,
 
 
Before this fire of sense decay,
 
This smoke of thought blow clean away,
 
And leave with ancient night alone
 
The steadfast and enduring bone

Thus, another day and another night follows another day and night until the flower of life decays, loosing petal by petal its life powers, suffering the inexorable infirmity after infirmity and the degeneration of faculty after faculty---while its born companion sits, suppressing a gloat, watching the inevitable descent of life and ascent of its birth-mate ---Death.
 
There have been times and there will be times when what’s left of the flower will have occasion to wish to cast off this slough of sense and lie down in a bed of dust. “And leave with ancient night alone / The steadfast and enduring bone.”
 
But the victory over Death are those moments in life that one can, while still equipped with consciousness and acute memory, relive. The showers of hug and kisses from relatives and strangers while a child; the teenage companionship with friends of his own sex; the coming to love the beauties of nature; the bliss and agony of first love; the day of discharge from military service; the mixed emotions of the day of marriage; the elation of the birth of a child; the graduations from educational institutions; the first paycheck; the first mortgage and first house; the payoff of a note; the steady growth and achievements of one’s children and grandchildren; a doctor’s good report. And walking without cane to the post office at age ninety.
 
* * *
 
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.