There came a wind that no eye could behold,
yet every leaf knew its passing.
It did not roar like the storms of pride,
nor rage like the seas of ambition.
It arrived softly,
as a forgotten prayer returns to the lips of an old pilgrim,
and the earth bowed its head without a word.
I asked the wind,
“Are you Death?”
It smiled with the silence of eternity and replied,
“I am not the end you fear.
I am the hand that opens the locked door.
I am the breath that extinguishes the little lamp
so that the soul may behold the sun.”
Then I saw kings stripped of their crowns,
beggars clothed in the same naked truth,
lovers whose tears became pearls,
and warriors whose swords dissolved into dust.
For the wind remembered no throne,
no nation,
no name carved upon stone.
It gathered the proud cedar
and the frail wildflower with equal tenderness,
for eternity measures neither height nor strength,
but only the weight of the heart.
O children of the passing hour,
why do you build your homes
upon the smoke of tomorrow?
Why do you quarrel over handfuls of earth
when the wind has already written your names
upon the sky?
Death is not the enemy of life.
It is life’s final hymn,
the last note without which
the song remains unfinished.
When the Wind of Death seeks me,
let it not find me clutching gold
or counting the applause of men.
Let it find me with empty hands
that they may be filled with stars.
And if my body must become dust,
let my love become the fragrance
the wind cannot carry away.
For death takes only what was borrowed;
it cannot touch
that which was born of love,
nor silence
the soul that has learned
to sing with eternity.