The Balance Sheet Poem by Alexander Raju

After all these days of busy human life
Of hectic earnings and tiresome miseries
What's left on earth as ultimate profit,
In the final balance sheet of history?

Well! I can think and write on death
Better than other subjects
For death is celebrated
Everywhere in this mortal world.

Thou art born from dust
Unto dust thou shall return,
For all born beings will die
And death is inevitable.

All our great past masters
Turn into mere characters
Of legends and fairy tales,
No more alive than shadows.

Once dead and buried,
How fast they vanish;
They hide under the soil
For a few weeks and disappear.

They're erased from earth
And from relatives' mind'
And those live here will think
Of them as dreams and nightmares.