Death, which lays bare the ungrounded nature of our lives, is both terrifying and alluring. Can we befriend it without domesticating it?

One might claim that the most accurate image of death is birth, which must feel to the baby like the loss of the whole world. Perhaps if we were less well schooled in sup pressing our feelings we would howl like a newborn infant on our deathbeds. It is as though at birth we are thrust out of an over powering plenitude, one which fits our flesh as snugly as an extra skin, into the inter minable abyss of the real. No wonder we have fantasies of wreaking vengeance on whatever evil angel expelled us from Eden. Struggling even so to climb back inside her body, we find to our dismay that the only surrogate for this enclosure is the tomb. In the English language, this near-identity is underscored by a chance rhyme.

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