Ironic Epitaph (9/5/97)

Two sisters meet at Heaven's gate
Through God's irony
Both standing tall and beautiful,
All judgments now of God, not man.

They depart this Earth just hours apart,
Yet worlds apart, or so it seems.

One's life spun of royal gowns of silk and soirees;
One's life spun Gandhi's saris of cotton and poverty.
One was won, a noble prize;
The other won a Nobel Prize.

One bequeaths her blood to royal sons surviving;
One washed the blood of strangers dying.
One, in passing, Earth's sorrows stay on;
One, in passing, Earth's hopes stay on.

Asymmetries and symmetries persist:
Both touched many;
Both now canonized by man.
Both were nothing, yet everything;
Forever, both gone.

As we are nothing, yet everything;
And soon gone.
Respect, we must, these symmetries, this irony.