Man Runs Towards the Grave

Man Runs Towards the Grave is a piece using a poem of the same name written by the 11th century poet, scholar, and statesman Samuel ha-Nagid. In this poem I see a reflection of the anxieties I experience from the sense that time, and therefore my life, is slipping past my fingers. Although dark, this poem comes with a sense of comfort with the thought that we all ultimately work towards the same goal: death, a fate that no level of greatness or failure alters. Because in the grand scheme of time, it makes no difference how you lived.

Man runs towards the grave,
And rivers hasten to the great deep
The end of all living is their death,
And the palace in time becomes a heap.
Nothing is further than the day gone by,
And nothing nearer than the day to come,
And both are far, far away
From the man hidden in the heart of the tomb.