And Death Shall Have No Dominion, part V

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.

The last stanza:

And death shall have no dominion.

And the ashes of death will cease to tyrannize and menace those consumed by the fires of their passions.

As I once heard:

अगर है शौक़ मरने का ,तो हर दम लौ लगाता जा,
जला कर खुदनुमाई को, भस्म तन पर लगाता जा.

(If you are passionate about death, let the blaze of that passion burnish every moment of your existence,
As that blaze turns your self-centeredness to ashes, let those ashes then adorn your body.)

No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;

After the men are gone from the earth, perhaps there will come a time when other forms of life too slowly pass into oblivion. Birds and oceans may cease to exist. There was a time, billions of years ago, when life on earth was only in the future. But the wonder is that life sprang from that apparent lifelessness. Lifelessness did not endure eternally. There might be another ice age, another deluge, another apocalypse, but, so what?

Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

"The strength and the beauty of a tender leaf is its vulnerability to destruction. Like a blade of grass that comes up through the pavement, it has the power that can withstand casual death." (Krishnamurti's Notebook)

What is that power? What is that brave facing of an ending but an implicit, intrinsic, inherent, intoxicated determination that life shall begin again. That this ending is but a hiatus.

The beauty of life - the birds, the waves, the flowers - may fall into lifelessness, but this passage is life itself. There will be further waves, further life forms, even stranger trees. Life is the arrow of time, as it moves forward from chaos to order to chaos again.

Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

And even though the soil and earth contain death and a seeming chaos and insanity, that insanity camouflages and hides the seed that gives rise to heartbreaking beauty when new life blossoms forth. Perhaps the myriad forms of death are what give shape to the myriad forms of life.

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And this dance of life and death and then life again will continue to witness and be witnessed, till the stars and the nebulae and the galaxies and the constellations scatter away, into dust, into vacuum, into darkness.

And from that apparent void and darkness and nothingness shall again come matter and light and life and little children and singing and the beauty of creation in all its forms.

And death shall have no dominion.

"To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible — and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you." (W. N. P. Barbellion, in The Journal of a Disappointed Man)

And death shall have no dominion.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion, part IV

Part I, Part II, Part III.

Before I move on to the final stanza, allow me to share a rendering of the first stanza in the voice of George Clooney.  This is from the film Solaris, as mentioned in Part I.

The music is by Cliff Martinez, one of the outstanding soundtrack artists of our time.  His music for two films by Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, and Only God Forgives) is very creative and modern.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion, part III

Part I, Part II.

And death shall have no dominion.

And death might take away one man or a million, but it shall not rule the earth.

Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;

The winds of change appear and disappear, on the surface of life. But deep down, at the foundations of existence, there exists a stillness and a calm. Neither sorrow nor joy, neither ebullience nor grief, neither dance nor wail exists at that depth. The sea and winds and the struggles and the battles roar only at the surface, but as men sink down into death, they are still, motionless, silent. Though dying be painful, death is not.

On a digression, I recommend a story apparently about dying, and the great peace that comes once you accept death: Death of an old, old man by Roald Dahl.

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

The agonies of living and dying ages our bodies, breaks our hearts and diminishes our minds. We gain only to lose. We stand, learn to walk, fall and rise again, undertake journeys, get lost, find our way again, or perhaps find ourselves forgotten and lonely. The flesh can be torn, the frame can be tortured, but throughout history there have been men whose spirit has withstood all this and who have transcended pain. For them, death was not the final calamity, but only the final test. Jesus of Nazareth of course, but many sung and unsung heroes before and after him. They had a fire and a passion which was stronger than the desire to survive. For them, living was not the highest value, their spirit was.

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;

Faith is both a flame in the spirit, as well as how it expresses itself in our acts and our years while we are alive. The expressions of faith can be imprisoned, they can be broken apart, temples can be brought down, hands and tongues cut from the bodies, books can be burnt, paintings and sculptures and schools and homes and fireplaces and little cups of porcelain can be destroyed. The evil of destruction coexists with the fire of creativity. Creations can be destroyed, but creativity endures in other forms, only to create again. Faith in the hands can be snapped, but faith in one's heart can be eternal and indestructible.

Split all ends up they shan't crack;

Splitting is separation, while cracking is the admission of defeat. One can defeat an army, separate mothers from sons, husbands from wives, an artist from his creations, but how can one defeat bravery, motherhood, love, and art? One cannot. These are eternal.

And death shall have no dominion.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion, part II

Part 1.

I present the first stanza, line by line.

And death shall have no dominion.

Death shall not conquer us. It will not vanquish the power of life. There is no denying death, but it will not, cannot, take away the myriad forms and processes of everlasting life: the rejuvenation, the re-birth, the budding and blossoming of flowers in the spring, the melting of ice and the formation of clouds and the rain and the rebirth of a parched earth. Death shall come, but it shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

In death there is no distinction. In life we are distinguished. In death we are of the soil: naked, unadorned, simple. And as all earth is one, so are dead men. They don’t stand tall any more, ready to fly away from earth, but are the very earth itself. The color of skin is like the color of one’s dress: ephemeral and superficial. In life we might be fair or tan. In death, we are all the color of the soil.

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

The disintegration of the body is also its scattering. Once scattered, what is to distinguish a man who once lived in a mansion from one who lived under the moon? One who felt the cool air through the whirl of a cooling fan from one who felt the very wind caress his cheeks?

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

As the body disintegrates, it gets reduced more and more to its essence: from movement to stillness, from form to mere structure, from accumulation and adornments to being bare and Spartan.  From breath to blood to flesh to bone to dust.

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Restored to glory, restored to being part of the wind and the sky, restored to space, released from the confines of flesh, they are now earth, the moon, the sun, and the constellations.  They are once more part of the glory of nature, while earlier their vanity and pride made them meek and puny.

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

The knowledge gained through a lifetime shall be no more, and there will be a seeming chaos and noise where there was once a lullaby and a symphony. But there is music in the wind, there is a rhythm in the river, and the beat of waves and the thunderclouds reverberates even through the deaf. Chaos is not disorder: a tree in the forest is exactly where it should be, a flower blooming is not answerable to any higher order but its own existence, a dead fallen fruit is life-giving or it may just rot away. And that implicit way of being, where there is no becoming, is the peak of understanding.

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Death puts us down, when we can no longer walk or fly or reach out to hold a hand, but as we scatter, darkness becomes light, the dead nourish the living, one life gives away to another, and the circle of life continues to shrink and expand. We accumulate the weight of our memories, and then we are unburdened once more. The power of life is irrepressible. A seed breaks through the soil, the little bird hatches through the egg, the blade of grass is crushed only to become straight again and to feel the sunlight shimmering on it.  And they all contain the scattered remains of what was once dead.  They cannot but rise to life, for life is in essence a push against randomness, against fate.

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

The unique forms can disintegrate and transform, but the formation cannot. If love is what gives birth to new forms, to new life...  If love is what formation is ... Then love is eternal. The coming together and the scattering and then coming together again can no more stop than the earth can stop circling the sun.

...

And death shall have no dominion.

And no, death shall not conquer us.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion, part I

After searching in vain for a somewhat poetic analysis of this moving poem by Dylan Thomas, I decided to attempt one myself.  I came to know of this poem while watching the equally moving film Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002), which film is itself a remake and a homage to the earlier film of the same name, directed in 1972 by the iconic Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky.

The poem is called "And Death Shall Have No Dominion".  It was written in 1933, and the title finds its inspiration in St Paul's Epistle to the Romans: 

Knowing that Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over him. (6.9)

Here's the poem, in full:

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

In three subsequent posts, I will present my understanding and appreciation of this poem.