Once Again... Poem by Goddy Nana Mens

Once again, the dreary dirges have begun an upward journey.
The sunny day did not end in a moonlit night,
The flute is keening for the latest victim,
Another soul has crossed over.
Once again, Death decides the colour of the clothe we wear,
He has taken the mirth and now our chest is wet with tears.
That one who was here is now gone,
And we do not expect his return.
Many have left us before; so many we lost count.
And yet the pain is always the same,
Always just as heartbreaking as the last time if not more.
Perhaps, it is. Indeed it is more.
For we always hope the just Fallen would be the last,
Hoping that Fate would not be cruel enough to cause us yet another parting.
But then Death lives just to prove us wrong.
To prove to us that He takes at His will,
Never minding even if it is from the very same tree.
We always mourn the departure of Fallen men.
But are we, the Living, any better off?
Do we not also deserve to be keened for?
For we die and are buried with our fallen loves,
And our souls already begin to rot before the mortal death.
We are witnesses of countless obituaries,
And attendants of endless wakes.
We mourn with the disheartened families.
But the pain we feel is not of the Loss we have suffered,
Not of the emptiness the bleak future presents,
Nor of the choking nostalgia that stalls the heartbeat,
But the fact that we are always the burying not the buried.
The fact that we always look on hopelessly as our fellows are taken,
Shackled body and soul by a slavemaster too mighty a foe.
The fact that our impotent rage smirks and looks us mockingly in the face,
Reminding us of our humanity, our mortality - our limitation,
And that we shall never defeat our Greatest Enemy by our own accord.
Thus, the incongruous guilt we feel for being alive,
The sudden despise for the life we once so desperately craved.
For we seek solace in a curse,
The irony of seeking peace at the feet of our sworn Enemy.
But as though this were all a game to Him,
As though everything were just a simple bout of chess,
Death ignores the seeking and seeks the hidden.
And thus, we mourn once again.
So once again, sorrowful voices lift up towards the Heavens,
Asking questions coded in dirges.
Though we expect no answers.
And we pour our soul's sorrow into hollow woods.
The Dead are gone, safely tucked away in the bosom of the Earth,
And the Living are no better off having died with all those they buried.
So in the heel of the hunt, Death is the ultimate winner,
For no man is wholly alive; a part of him having once died somewhat.
And both the quick and the Dead rot away into nothingness.
Once again, a child is an orphan,
Once again, a woman is a widow,
Once again, a mother is childless,
Once again, a friend has left us,
And once again, I am asking, "Why? "