skopia
A stroke left the editor of French Elle able to move one eyelid. Blinking while an assistant recited the alphabet, Bauby composed a memoir of appetite, his children, and the body holding him.
Bras Cubas writes from beyond the grave, dedicating his memoirs to the first worm that gnawed his corpse. A rich Brazilian idler tallies a wasted life with wit, malice, and zero remorse.
Writing from a hut ten feet square, a Kyoto recluse recalls the fire, whirlwind, famine, and earthquake that destroyed the capital, and concludes that nothing built by people is meant to stay.
Everything is atoms falling through empty space, Lucretius argues in Latin verse, your soul included, and it dies when your body does. He wrote the poem to cure his readers of fearing death.
Frost's New England of stone walls and deep snow arrives in plain talk held to strict meter, with something much colder underneath. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening offers no comfort.