For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.

Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.

If seeing her an hour before her last
Weak cough into all blackness I could yet
Be held by chalk-white walls

- The Consumptive. Belsen 1945

As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.

To live at all is miracle enough.

And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?