Death comes too close

I wasn't close to the pain of the anguish and suffering in South East Asia, I haven't been affected by loss recently and I've only known one person who's died in my life. But people lose their loved ones, those close to them and I can still relate. Whole communities have been washed away and there is no way of really comprehending it - they're simply gone and what was there is now merely rubble leaving people in need. I was reading some poetry by Walt Whitman today, and came across this which I think clearly expresses a feeling, a feeling of contemplation:

"What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

-Walt Whitman

from the work "Leaves of Grass", sometimes called "A child said What is the grass?" and othertimes called "Song of Myself".


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