She Speaks of Death -- Barbara Pescan

Guest poem sent in by John Beaty

(Poem #1209) She Speaks of Death Oblivion, she said in a weary voice, is what is after death. There is nothing after death but nothing and that's all right with me. It made good scientific sense, nailed to the cathedral door of her religious childhood. And when her husband died a few years later oblivion pinned against eternity sagged in the middle and in its folds sweet disbelief surprised her and the hope she hadn't seen the last of him yet. -- Barbara Pescan

        from "Morning Watch"

I ran across this poem while looking for something for a morning
service, and it just HIT me so hard. It completely captures (for me,
at any rate) the ambivalence of humanism.

John Beaty

[Martin adds]

I am reminded, too, of the last verse of Clough's "There is no God" (Poem #69):

    And almost everyone when age,
      Disease, or sorrows strike him,
    Inclines to think there is a God,
      Or something very like Him.

though Pescan's tone is a lot more sympathetic than Clough's is.