Death - Visitor's Poem

by Chris Mokgehle
(Moletjie Gakolopo, South Africa)

You Death, a thief, yes a thief, you take when we least expect, and you never return what you take.

How can you be so cruel, we keep asking, taking the very ones that we love so much, and you don’t borrow, how dare you? We ask.

Don’t you think you should at least notify us first that we can at least say goodbye?

Do you ever get satisfied or saturated, we ask? You just keep on taking, taking, taking and taking, you never get tired.

Death, I know you are listening, are you such a coward that you can’t even answer me back?
OK, OK, YOU SAY YOU WANT TO TALK, LET'S TALK THEN...

I heard such kind of questions before, and I can’t understand you humans either.

I really can’t figure why you have to be so ignorant. Why do you keep on worrying about me so much, while you know that I have always been here, always here and always will be here.

Why doesn’t it bother that one plus one is two, because it will never be three, ten or nineteen. That is a fact, and so am I.

Why do you people keep on worrying about the things you can’t change? Because it is written “fools are those who worry about their lives, while wise are those who worry about their death.�

As much as you hate me now, the time is coming when you will beg just to have me and you will never find me.

If you think I am that that cruel, wait until you get to the other side, where suffering, tormenting and gnashing of teeth will be forever.

I make you cry, yes, but after a while you forget and start being ignorant again. Who is a fool now? The sad thing is that you don’t even know when I’m coming for you.

Oh you humans, let me be generous and knock some sense into your heads. The truth is, you are going to die one day and you will either go to heaven or hell, you choose.

If you only knew what’s best for you, you would stop worrying about me taking you and start worrying about where I am taking you. YOU CHOOSE...