"elegy to the living", Felix Deng

do not set aside flowers for the dead
nor well-wishes for those going away —
the living have a greater need than they
could ever claim to have. for it is said:
the dead do not suffer in the absence
of the living. they have no hearts to grow
fonder with time; they have no flesh to know
the loneliness of empty beds.

silence
remains the last bastion we cling on to —
as if through our spoken words, the spectres
they leave behind would somehow be unmade.
sorrow stands vigil and in doing so
imparts clarity: the dead die but once
the living die a hundred times over.