Now That I Am Dead

After reading “Evening Land” by Pär Lagerkvist

As I stooped through the low portal of death,
I saw my human fate
emptied out into a lethe.

Life’s luggage of love and hate
was left behind the wall;
the gardener burned my once-essential freight.

I asked myself if this was all.
Intelligent souls clicked like dolphins in the wind
on either side of the wall,

discerning everything. My mind
came clean; discernment whirled ahead
as soon as I was schooled by the garrulous wind.

Now that I am dead,
I know that God did not create the soul;
the soul created God instead.

Now that I am dead, I know the soul
imagined heaven straddling earth
where God was hired to rule

irascible man and iterative death/rebirth.
I dreamed of an infinite life,
a dream encoded before my birth,

because one life was not enough.
I know that paradise was once inside my head,
now that I am dead.

NOTE: I read “Evening Land” and wrote this poem over 30 years ago. It was published in 2018. We wrote book reports when we were in school. “Now That I Am Dead” is like that. There is a poignant tone of regret throughout about Lagerkvist’s loss of faith. I tried to capture his point of view here.