Poet's Choice

He leans back in his chair, rubs his hands, strokes

his beard, and says, "I'm thinking of Strand, I'm thinking

that one of these days I'll be out back, swinging my scythe

or holding my hourglass up to the moon, and Strand will appear

in a jacket and tie, and together under the boulevards'

leafless trees we'll stroll into the city of souls. And when

we get to the Great Piazza with its marble mansions, the crowd

that had been waiting there will welcome us with delirious cries,

and their tears, turned hard and cold as glass from having been

held back so long, will fall and clatter on the stones below.

O let it be soon. Let it be soon."

Eventual death here is a window with a view not of the social world, as in Swift's poem, but of how people think. The ways we find to imagine and re-imagine realities -- the traditional reaper leaning back in his chair and musing wistfully to himself. The paradox of the first six words in the poem, the reversal of the next six, the giddy yet deadpan quality of details such as "in a jacket and tie," the surreal tears clattering on the stones, all build up to the concluding prayer of Death-- who speaks most of the poem. Strand refreshes and questions the nature of allegory, which portrays death as a person: how much like a person, the poem asks, and in what ways? What happens to our dread or our sense of mystery when we mingle the scythe and hourglass with contemporary clothing, the hourglass, the Great Piazza, the crowd? Strand's poem -- no less than Swift's -- invites a reader to consider familiar reality in a new way, or to discover a new reality.

(Jonathan Swift's poem "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D." is available in numerous collections of his work. Mark Strand's poem "2002" is from his book "Man and camel: poems." Knopf. Copyright © 2006 by Mark Strand.)