Ignorance Of Death
By William Empson
Then there is this civilising love of death, by which
Even music and painting tell you what else to love.
Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death
Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
The Communists however disapprove of death
Except when practical. The people who dig up
Corpses and rape them are I understand not reported.
The Freudians regard the death-wish as fundamental,
Thought “the clamour of life” proceeds from its rival “Eros.”
Whether you are to admire a given case for making less clamour
Is not their story. Liberal hopefulness
Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.
Because we have neither hereditary nor direct knowledge of death
It is the trigger of the literary man’s biggest gun
And we are happy to equate it to any conceived calm.
Heaven me, when a man is ready to die about something
Other than himself, and is in fact ready because of that,
Not because of himself, that is something clear about himself.
Otherwise I feel very blank upon this topic,
And think that though important, and proper for anyone to bring up,
It is one that most people should be prepared to be blank upon.
