maybe just not being is simply enough

[lullabyfor]

The Night Migrations

This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds' night migrations.

It grieves me to think
the dead won't see them--
these things we depend on,
they disappear.

What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won't need
these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine.

-- Louise Glück

&

"'One fatal day
has taken all those sweets of life away.'
But this they do not add, that the desire
of things like these hangs over you no more."

-- Lucretius: On the Nature of the Universe