Second Death

'All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death,
From whose embrace no mortal can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing your will!
The second death can do them no harm.'
from The Canticle of the Creatures, by St. Francis of Assisi

In the darkness of noon
proud souls decline
from glittering heights
to October's stark truth.

Sacred fire ignites
their hopeless, sad flight
into sin and self-
separation.