This poem is perhaps not for the faint-hearted, and it is a little long.

The Seven Seals
By John Herlihy

The secret of death lies protected behind seven seals,
Desired by all to know, but that no one ever reveals.
Who pretends to fathom the depths of the vast ocean?
Whoever claims to have such a revelatory magic potion?
To break death’s seals would require the likes of a Houdini,
The sole purview is none other than the Supreme Divinity.

The first sacred seal of death lies behind a sublime mystery,
A mystery people have lived with for all of recorded history.
Obscure in its essence and sphinx-like in its enduring tone,
Humanity will continue to live it and never truly come home.
Truth to tell, the mystery serves us well in keep us guessing.
If we knew we live forever, we would run amok, transgressing.

The second sacred seal of death lies in the well of human nature;
There is good reason why we are called human as nomenclature.
We do not live forever, we are born, we grow up, we live, we die;
There are things we must discover, we cannot just live on the sly.
The seal of human nature lies in waiting ready to be cracked open;
Our weaknesses, limitations and sins our most unbecoming token.

By way of extension, this leads us to the third sacred death seal,
Heaped upon us as an impenetrable barrier no one can unseal.
Feelings of remorse in not believing in an eventual awakening;
Guilty pleasures reflect in death’s mirror as perennial forsaking.
We pass thru death’s door with our balance of virtues and vices,
A wanton feast of self-serving desires that linger as odious devices.

The fourth sacred seal of death lies as morbid fear in a hollow drum;
The terror of the unseen leaves us wondering what we will become.
Who has the presence of mind to crack open the seal of death’s fear?
As we age, it encroaches upon our shrinking hearts as it draws near.
Fear of pain, fear of parting, fear of perpetual loss, fear of the abyss;
Oblivion yawns a tired smile as we grimace at all that we will miss.

The fifth sacred seal of death lies in the thievery of its lie;
Premonitions of fire and brimstone leave us high and dry.
What other promises does the seal of death hope to keep,
For all those earthlings who pass thru its door willing to seek?
If death reveals its true face and not hide under lock and key,
Its lie would finally be exposed as the thief it is for all to see.

The sixth sacred seal of death lies in the smoke of its pretension,
Suggesting a terminal end that is nothing but fatal suspension.
We ourselves take on the pretensions of death thinking to be free;
The world is ours for the taking and we accumulate all that we see.
Tricking us into believing that we will live in the world forever,
Death happens only to other people, but to us it happens never.

The seventh sacred seal of death lies in the drapery of its sorrow;
Death seems so absolute we think it will never come tomorrow.
And yet mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers all eventually die;
No one doubts the heavy sorrow that fills our hearts when we cry.
Death steals our loved ones whom we know will never ever return;
They lie on the other side, in some other dimension, as we yearn.

Who has not spoken Donne’s poetic words ‘death be not proud’;
The human face stone cold and humbled as it lies beneath a shroud.
There comes a point when the sacred seals are broken to reveal,
Knowledge that for a lifetime death’s seals have securely sealed,
Through the long ages of our life we have desperately tried to espy,
When we pass through death’s door, we will realize we don’t die.