THE JOURNEY OF SOULS
for Michael Duff Newton

My culture’s brought me up to see our lives
As nasty, brutish, singular and short,
With death as nothing anyone survives
And nothing here of ultimate import.
To see things otherwise, my culture claims,
Is wishful thinking and mere fantasy;
At best we may amuse ourselves with games;
Oblivion, though, is our reality.

Not so, an old philosophy declares,
Which finds in dreams and trances evidence
That we live many lives and each prepares
Us for the next as rightful recompense
For lessons we have learned the life before:
Life after life, we journey and explore.

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