Leslie Kavanaugh-III
Stand Fast
Stand fast
Stand firm against the vicissitudes.
The only certainty is that everything changes
The only finitude of life is that
All will cease to be.
Everything that is born must die
But this does not mean that I
Embrace this wretched truth;
The inevitable is ripped from my finger tips
My hands grope ever-insistently
For the moment of understanding
Until I succumb to the nocturnal membrane.
I will withstand the unalterable,
Approaching silence
With tenderness, with puissance, with resplendence
But never submission.
Everything that is born must die, yet
Nothing that dies will escape the delirious rapture.
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