To His Coy Mistress

Andrew Marvell

There are all the classic metaphors of rebirth and most famously the phoenix. Frazer's Golden Bough is rife with them. But unless you believe in the afterlife or reincarnation, there's going to come a time when, there's no time left. Have there ever been any death bed novels? If you're an athlete or a politician you're going to have your "last hurrah." Pitchers have a notoriously short half-life. The saddest is the individual who had devoted his life to a solitary device, reaching artifacts from the Titanic in a submersible, for jnstance, only to find there to be faults. "Had we but world enough and time... sings the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell in his classic "To His Coy Mistress." Alas one may have neither of these two elements, world or time, left. At a certain point in a marathon runners hit a wall. Running on empty is a feat that defies the Gods.

read the review of The Kafka Studies Department in Booklife (PW)

and listen to "I'm Your Puppet" by James and Bobby Purify