The Approach of Death
Is there among my friends a heart
As bitten, bitter as mine today?
Is there among my neighbors a woman
Whose grieving is greater than my wail?
Will the deer lend me legs to run to the jackals
Who'd teach me to mourn my better days?
After sixty one years, is a hair's breadth left
In my soul for delight at a songgirl's strains?
Now that heaven's withdrawn the rainclouds of youth,
Will Time spread its youthful dew on my plain?
Now my manhood's light has dimmed, is there
Yet oil to pour in my lamp for flame?

My friends' graves say I'm to join them tomorrow
To pitch my tent deep in their domain:
If I cannot regain the vigor I seek,
Best take up a shovel and start my grave.
The grief of age has set in my heart
A fire whose tongues burn my hair bright gray.
Weakness has strengthened the pain in my knees.
I strain even at court, on level terrain.
I grieve for my soul which is dear to me,
And it's right to mourn what is dear always.
As my beard goes white, I see in my heart
A spot like soot on a pot: dark age.
Had I power over Time, I'd bind his hands
From brushing the black of my beard with gray.
Were it mere sorrow's fire now searing my skull,
Juice squeezed from my winepress would quench the blaze.
But age has squeezed all young manhood out
From my face. Young women avert their gaze.
Would I could have the knowledge of God:
How near, how distant is that dread day?
How long shall I rest as spiritless dust
And when will my spirit rise again?
The heart says: Live on. Whatever rends
The body, may God heal my wounds away.
May He grant me strength in my weakness, empower
My limbs like wings on a bird of prey
In His goodness and grace. For in Him I rest
The hope and trust of all my days.

They say: in the grave is rest and peace.
But I fear it is where I will face my failures.
They call death "Going unto the Fathers."
They are right. There my fathers and mothers await.
But why when I die must you drive my body
From my shady roof to the netherworld's shades?
Why clothe my corpse in a shroud when both
That cloth and I in the grave will degrade?
Why cleanse me in water, when come the morrow
I'll be foul with the stench of my rotting waist?

Many ages passed on this earth, O Lord,
And I was nothing among the ages.
Then You called me to mind, and sent me to be
Alive, though I never asked to be made,
Then gave me in birth to dearth and destruction,
A source of sorrows, stone flung by Fate.
And though at my birth You beautified me,
Come the end You will deform my frame.
But Your word is true and Your works are righteous.
My spirit and mouth were crooked and snaked.
Bring me a scroll. Get me ink and a quill
And today I'll darken it with my tale.
My eyes as I read will flow like fountains
Because there can be no tears in the grave.
I'll mourn this lovely form that my friends
Will rush to the bonehouse that is man's fate,
This splendid form garbed in no greater splendor
Than dust, eyes shuttered, mouth plugged agape.
Like a stone in the heart of the sea, my tongue
That once told of my feats will be stilled in the crate.
The eyes that witnessed much wonder will rot
In their sockets, consumed in a pit of decay,
My limbs lie idle, my ears go deaf,
My palate bereft of speech and taste.
This bitterer still: I'll be called to rise
From dust and the grave on my judgment day
To be held in the balance of all my deeds
As my merits and sins on the scales are laid.

Yet perhaps an angel will speak for me,
Lighten my wrongs, give my virtues weight,
And, at judgment, remind my Lord how I labored
In study of Scripture and Law for His sake.
I'll hear: "Long has the Lord in your work found favor"
As the weight of virtue tilts the scales
And in death I'll rejoice, gathered unto His Glory,
As He gathers the moon and stars of my gaze.