"DEATH HAS LIFTED US"
Words by Connie Barlow

written in honor of Jack Heckelman, entering hospice care, in March 2005
(Jack died April 24, 2005)

Traditional hymn melody "Hyfrydol" by Rowland Hugh Prichard, 1830, BUT SYNCOPATED, AS MODIFIED BY PETER MAYER IN HIS SONG, Blue Boat Home. Listen to an AUDIO-CLIP of Peter Mayer singing Blue Boat.


Click to hear an AUDIO CLIP of one verse.


Note: You can learn more about the science that undergirds these lyrics by visiting one of our web pages:

  • "Death As Natural and Generative at All Levels of Reality" (http://www.thgreatstory.org/charts/death.html).

  • Click to learn more about the programs we offer for an inspiring, evolutionary understanding of death.

    Feel free to use, copy, distribute, and publish these lyrics however you wish. Permission is granted.


    1. Full of life at this keen moment,
    Universe in human guise.
    Species swam and crawled before us
    Salty seas still spill from our eyes.
       Death has lifted us; death has gifted us
       Yield we now our poignant assent.
    May we shape memories in those who follow-ollow us
    And bequeath them a pla-net blessed.

    2. Once mere zygote, fetal fistful,
    Spheres be we sans cellular death.
    As we elder we shant be wistful,
    Fearful for our very last breath.
       Death has molded us; death unfolds through us
       In ev'ry morsel of food we partake.
    Passing the torch to the new gener-a-a-a-uh-tions
    Final gifts that we all shall make.

    3. Starry heavens no-more immortal
    Praise celestial finitude.
    Perished suns prepared the atoms
    Here in me and also in you.
       Death / divinity, wed eternally
       God no longer divorced from this Earth.
    Man not by sin birthed this fact of ex-i-i-i-i-stence
    Nor by hubris shall e're de-sert.

    4. Comfort taken in what we know of
    Mountains, lakes: ephemeral too.
    Ancient continents torn asunder
    Oceans born and soils renewed.
       Death the entrance fee, paid on exiting
       For all splendors and joys that arise.
    May there be love at our moment of pa-a-a-uh-sing
    And a glimpse of the clear blue sky.

    5. Were death banished from this fine planet
    Immortality would thus reign.
    No more death, but no more children
    Finite landscapes so would proclaim.
       Death in this new view, helps us all to do
       Aging possessed of a fair dignity.
    Goslings in spring and ponds teeming with polli-olli-wogs
    From now on through eternity.


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