An Epitaph
He leans across a golden table, Confronts God with an eye Still puzzled by the standard label All flesh bears: Made to die — And questions Him if He is able To reassure her why.
Countee Cullen
He leans across a golden table, Confronts God with an eye Still puzzled by the standard label All flesh bears: Made to die — And questions Him if He is able To reassure her why.
In Countee Cullen’s “An Epitaph,” a man leans across a golden table in the afterlife and directly questions God about death. The language is blunt: the “standard label / All flesh bears: Made to die” makes mortality sound almost bureaucratic, as if every human body comes stamped with the same grim…
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