Most persons with some debilitating condition
will suffer the disease, enduring it best as they can;
an artist or a poet must experience this weakness
so they can give it expression for the sake of humanity.
Only by voicing the frailty of the body
does the poet transcend this shell
and find the granite lining his soul
provides more than a final resting place.
The artist's clear vision of mortality
exposes the crack through which
man sniffs intimations of eternity
and the freedom to accept death.
When other men take ill, their only concern is to heal
but when an artist falls the pain blends the colors
of his life so that he creates legacy from his existence,
while the poet sings an eloquent dirge to his own demise.
