Thomas Keneally: death is not the fly in the cosmic ointment. It is the cosmic ointment

Life is strong in people - we didn't get to be wreckers of the planet without a mighty life force in us. But accepting death is one of the contentments of age

When I was 16, I was given a wonderful anthology, Poetry of the English-Speaking World, as an English prize. I recommend it to this day, since I have returned to it often between 1952 and now. And early in it occurs a poem which brought me up short then, at demented 16, and speaks still, at a somewhat differently demented 81.

When I say "demented" I do not yet mean the aphasia which has disassembled the splendid cerebral mechanisms of some of my contemporaries. I mean just "demented" in the plain old sense of an animal whose end is not far off and who knows it.