The Efficacy

Once, I read, Whatever doctrine

You believe, there’s no denying

Death at least looks very final.

Indeed. Say irreversible.

But everything’s final like that,

Every passing moment, nothing

Ever coming back, while nothing

Is final in the other sense,

Meaning done, all doing finished.

A corpse has transformations yet

To manage, some of them bringing

Some of it back through racks of life.

We feel the loss. We feel the loss

Of everything, the permanent

Impermanence of existence,

But we can’t say, can’t understand

Precisely what it is that’s lost.

Physicists track it to black holes,

But calculate, even from those,

Information may be returned,

And no one has captured a soul,

Taken the measure of a soul,

Found the gaps in life’s fabric

Left by death, much less missing soul.

So, why is it death looks final?

What is it we feel that we’ve lost,

The more so callous life goes on?

One theory holds that life’s the most

Efficient way to entropy.

Loss is efficacy, I guess.