Observe how sanitised an age
we’ve lived in – where death occurs
toward the natural end.
People slip away:
the mourners given therapy
to return smiling to their work.
It was not always thus
and even now, in slums and camps,
young die by thousands, day and night.
This was how it was when Rembrandt
was painting portraits of himself
that did not disguise the prevalence
of omnipresent death.
of omnipresent death.
Now, fear has lifted scales from our eyes.
Three of us, my age, asked at lunch,
“Would we all survive”?
When eventually we revisit galleries
of paintings from before the 19th century,
with their depictions of death and loss,
we will feel that we are in familiar territory –
The paintings have not changed
– we have.
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