War & Death

deviant art by dedong123


War & Death

1.
Wars begin through greed and vanity and are
continued through the insanity of nationalism
in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

The underlying theme of Western poetry is
mortality. The theme of carpe diem asks us to
seize the day because we have only a limited
number of them. To see life through the lens
of death is to approach the condition of
gratitude for the gift (or simply the fact)
of our existence. And as Wallace Stevens said,
Death is the mother of beauty. Only the
perishable can be beautiful, which is why
we are unmoved by artificial flowers.


2.
Wars begin through greed and vanity
and are continued
through the insanity of nationalism
in which the boundaries of a land
replace God.

The underlying theme of Western poetry
is mortality.
The theme of carpe diem asks us
to seize the day because
we have only a limited number of them.
To see life
through the lens of death
is to approach the condition
of gratitude for the gift
(or simply the fact)
of our existence.
And as Wallace Stevens said,
Death is the mother of beauty.
Only the perishable can be beautiful,
which is why we are unmoved
by artificial flowers.


Billy Collins

Posted over on BookRags

1. Billy Collins' prose quotes
2. Line breaks by Glenn Buttkus