she’ll die young.
several times — it can’t be helped.
she’ll wake up in the morning and die,
being reborn in the hours between burial
and bedtime.
she knows it must be so.
every minute, then,
between dying and dreaming,
is velvet red,
moss green
and deep cerulean.
she flies over a wintry moon
with flocks of wild geese;
charms dragons into politeness;
frees innocent prisoners.
nothing is impossible
if she can keep believing.
which, many days,
is the hardest part
of her adventures.
she knows she’ll die young —
she fights by living —
sometimes breathing is all
she can do.
but she doesn’t give up.
so long as one breath
follows another,
she can live a thousand years
in a millisecond.
strangers often become friends;
so it shall be with her.
she’ll die young.
many times.
it can’t be helped.
Very good. I like the lines ‘she’ll die young, many times, it can’t be helped.’ It ends this just spectacularly.
Great poem.
As long as in dying she is reborn, as long as every step is a possible destiny, as long as her spirit widens reaching new heights, and her eyes ever wide to engulf new scenes.
But why does death comes as she wakes up in the morning, at the beginning of the day? Is it because it is then that one puts up his mask to go out into the land of the “living”, out there where one is never oneself.
[… She cries, you fool, because she has lived!
And because she lives! But what she deplores
Most of all, and what makes her tremble down to her knees,
Is that tomorrow, alas!, she must go on living!
Tomorrow, and the next day, and forever! — like us!]
Charles Baudelaire, Le Masque