And death becomes more intimate

So many people are dying around us these days: in a split second, hundreds of people die, obliterated, because of an aircraft struck in turbulent weather, a ship sunk in stormy seas, a landslide, bird flu said to be on the riseeven though deaths in our proximity might be relatively rareor a train derailed.

And death becomes more intimatea quote from a poem by Subagio Sastrowardojo.

The phrase is startling, indeed. For