David Ignatow: "Above Everything"

I wished for death often
but now that I am at its door
I have changed my mind about the world.
It should go on; it is beautiful,
even as a dream, filled with water and seed,
plants and animals, others like myself,
ships and buildings and messages
filling the air—a beauty,
if ever I have seen one.
In the next world, should I remember
this one, I will praise it
above everything.

"Above Everything" by David Ignatow, from Whisper to the Earth: New Poems. © Little, Brown & Company, 1981.

Art credit: "Yee Peng Festival, Chiang Mai," photograph by Karl Davies.