Aquinas on the Nature of Suicide
i.
Though the senses
perceive only the phenomenal, the soul
knows no such limits, nor can it be
extinguished by human agency. Furthermore,
if we assume that a) the intellect can conceive
of an eternity (however dimly);
that b) a natural desire
ii.
cannot be in vain; that c) the soul,
being immaterial, is incorruptible; and admitting
finally that d) the soul desires above all
the conservation and preservation
of itself, it must be admitted
that the soul is immortal.
iii.
However, if Valerie or Peter
wish to die, and shape a course
necessary to the realization of this wish, then
whose desire is it, after all?
iv.
That is a difficult question.
v.
Or shall we, with The Philosopher,
presuppose an “evil genius” who
implants in Peter’s mind, or in Valerie’s heart,
a knowledge of eternity and a desire for life,
only to frustrate that very desire?
Letter to Books
I met you at the library. You with your stories about Roman emperors
and Indians, me with a twelve-year-old’s abundance of time.
It was agony to return you, so I often stole you. I placed you
in a stack with two stamped books on top, to fool the security guard.
This was before scanners, see. It’s funny. As I walked toward him
with my armload of books, my identity
suddenly occurred to me, as it does to people
who see a cruiser materialize in their rearview mirror, or who find themselves
falling from a great height in a dream. Anyway, as it happened,
he checked the book on top and waved me through.
That asshole lacked the manners to say good night.
Wherever I’ve been, my friends, you’ve been with me. In the cathedral plaza
at Zacatecas, in a chapel in Galicia, in a mouse-infested barracks in Germany. Once,
I found a pocket-size Quran in a smashed bunker in southern Iraq, near Nasiriyah.
The pages, soft and dry and rice-paper fine, comprehended a delicate calligraphy
like spindrift from the lip of a dune, or the wind-riffled surface of a pond.
I marveled at a poetry I could not read, a script devised
by desert navigators—with somewhat of the sea, and somewhat of the sand,
and somewhat of the stars in it. I sat in the vehicle, or in the tent,
like the proverbial ass before the lyre, heartbroken by a beauty I could not name
or understand. I can’t explain what happened next. I traded it with the fuel truck driver
for half a box of cupcakes, homemade. Presumably, I was hungry.
I forget that dude’s name. Anyway, he disappeared. The pain of the loss
increases with years, whenever I imagine holding that little book in my hands.
Books, old friends! My greatest fear is not illness, or losing some bullshit job,
or divorce, but the day when you no longer feel like spending time with me.
Life would be so desolate then.
I imagine us in old age: me with my eyes grown dim, seated like old King Alfred
in a wooden chair, reciting David’s songs from the parchment.
Grateful and attentive I am, like a kid again,
gladly beyond the cares of this world, one good ear
tilted slightly to your voice.
Elegy on the Death of Michael Scot, Court Astrologer to Frederick II
I’m waiting for news from you—a coded
message over the short-wave, maybe—but all I get
are Panamanian novellas or
Czech trucker music.
Reception is patchy, frequencies
migrate into garbled pleas
from astronauts stranded
on some hostile moon.
Dearly departed, where have you gone?
Do you find yourself among the castaways
crouched in foxholes in the lunar dust,
running desperately
low on oxygen and bullets?
Have you discovered the truth
about life on other planets,
earthkins among the gigantic stars
where the souls of the dead languish
in the thin air of memory?
Michael, have you finally arrived
at that legendary kingdom by the sea
where second chances grow on trees, where
a sunny day might
last for years, where we’ll finally
find the time to sit and talk,
or take a walk around the goldfish pond or
stretch out in the grass
and sleep and
sleep and
sleep?
Kevin Honold served in the US Army from 1988-1991. He is currently a Special Education teacher at a high school in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
ISSUED 