Consolation poem

That many have suffered this ought
Perhaps to be a consolation, but
It is the opposite of consolation.

In fact it means a sort of pollution;
It means contamination of my grief
By the density of others' suffering.

The brute truth of emotional pain
Is the same truth of the physical:
Its eclipse of everything but itself,

Itself, and the person it's grounded in.
Only the well can properly empathise.
Only the dead are free from selfishness.