Haldeman

excerpt from Fire, ice
(a story told as a sonnet redoublé)

The first time that I died was fire and ice.
Cancer fire, as pain drugs lost their hold . . .
I told them go ahead and throw the dice;
surrender to the cryogenic cold
these old and torn, worn and stitched remains
of the body that I so gladly wore
through one life's, the first life's, pleasures and pains.
Temporary death. Ice to freeze those sores.
If it's real death, then it is nothing more.
The chance of death was figured in the price:
the price that left my heirs a little poor.
But I would rather put my life on ice . . .

I'm old enough to know what life is worth --
quite old, but still too young for ash or earth.

I toured their factory. I saw the place
where what was left of me would find its rest.
A pool of nitrogen, wherein we guests
will sleep for ages, waiting for the race
of future not-quite-mortals who'll erase
the ill that brought us there, and then invest
our frozen bones with life again. The rest
is up to us: to find ourselves a place
in that future world.

But what caught at me

was the cold: ice to freeze these cancer sores
into limbo. That future paradise
was too remote (and wasn't guaranteed).
Pain flame and cryogenic reservoir:
the first time that I died was fire and ice.

The final months of life, I had to bide,
and let the cancer win. An accident,
a stroke, a murder or a suicide --
any end that's swift, convenient --
would mean the brain would start to die without
the tubes and wires in place to save the cells
that make us who we are. A final bout
with pain, indignity, hospital smells
and lights and noise, noise.

Then death. And then

the blood sucked out, replaced with slippery stuff
that doesn't freeze. The pool of nitrogen . . .
but I could feel. I wasn't dead enough.
At least it was relief from uncontrolled
cancer fire, as pain drugs lost their hold.

To read the rest of this poem, please buy the book.

Joe Haldeman has been writing poetry since he was a boy; his first publication was a poem printed in the Washington Post when he was nine years old. He's especially interested in formal poetry. This form, the sonnet redoublé, is fifteen stanzas long. The first stanza is a sonnet made up of the last lines of the next fourteen sonnets, in order.