The Weight of a Line: When Poetry Meets Mortality
There’s a line in Janiru Liyanage’s poem The Job that haunts me: ‘Dying is a thankless job.’ It’s not just the starkness of the statement that sticks—it’s the way it sits in the middle of a deeply personal, almost uncomfortable narrative. Personally, I think this line is a masterclass in how poetry can distill the most overwhelming human experiences into something both universal and intimate. What makes this particularly fascinating is how Liyanage uses it as a pivot point, not just in the poem but in the broader conversation about mortality, memory, and the ethics of art.
The Unseen Labor of Dying
One thing that immediately stands out is how Liyanage frames dying as labor. It’s not a passive act but a job—one that’s thankless, grueling, and often invisible. This isn’t just a poetic device; it’s a reflection of how society treats the dying. We sanitize death, turn it into a medical process, and then expect those experiencing it to do so quietly, without disrupting our comfort. What many people don’t realize is that this framing shifts the focus from the act of dying to the experience of it. It’s not just about the end; it’s about the hours, the moments, the spoonfuls of room-temperature baby corn that make up the final chapter.
From my perspective, this is where the poem becomes more than just a personal elegy. It’s a critique of how we handle mortality—both as individuals and as a culture. The great-aunt’s struggle isn’t just her own; it’s a mirror held up to all of us. How often do we turn away from the discomfort of death, leaving behind the corn stuck to the corners of lips we can’t or won’t reach?
The Ethics of Beautifying Suffering
A detail that I find especially interesting is Liyanage’s self-accusation in the poem: ‘One where you will not acknowledge your great aunt. One where you will not need grief to make the poem work.’ This raises a deeper question: Can art ever truly honor suffering without exploiting it? In my opinion, this tension is the heart of the poem. Liyanage isn’t just writing about death; she’s wrestling with the responsibility of the artist. How do you capture pain without turning it into a spectacle? How do you create beauty from something so raw and unyielding?
What this really suggests is that art isn’t just about expression—it’s about accountability. Liyanage’s poem doesn’t provide answers, but it forces us to sit with the questions. It’s a reminder that every line, every image, carries weight. The striped pink towel, the beeping monitor, the glowing green toilet—these aren’t just details; they’re fragments of a life that’s slipping away.
The Contrast Between Fragility and Futurity
If you take a step back and think about it, the poem’s structure is a study in contrasts. The fragility of the great-aunt’s final moments is juxtaposed against the imagined ‘perfect future’ of an uneventful suburban life. This isn’t just a stylistic choice; it’s a commentary on how we cope with mortality. We build futures—quiet, orderly, safe—to distract ourselves from the inevitability of decay. But as Liyanage shows, those futures are built on the backs of the people and moments we’ve lost.
What makes this particularly poignant is the way Liyanage ties it all together. The fruit salad rotting in the bags while the children pick figs with their hands isn’t just a scene; it’s a metaphor for how we prioritize the ideal over the real. How much sweeter the figs taste because they aren’t for them. This isn’t just about food; it’s about the things we discard, the moments we overlook, in our pursuit of perfection.
The Legacy of a Line
In the end, The Job isn’t just a poem about death—it’s a poem about what we leave behind. Liyanage’s great-aunt may be gone, but her struggle, her thankless job, lives on in these lines. Personally, I think this is the power of poetry: it turns the ephemeral into the eternal. It forces us to confront the things we’d rather ignore.
What many people don’t realize is that poetry like this isn’t just for the writer; it’s for the reader too. It challenges us to think about our own legacies, our own thankless jobs. Are we living in a way that honors the fragility of life? Or are we too busy building perfect futures to notice the corn stuck to the corners of our own lips?
Final Thoughts
Liyanage’s poem is a reminder that dying isn’t just an individual act—it’s a collective one. It’s about the people who watch, the people who remember, and the people who write it all down. In my opinion, this is what makes The Job so powerful. It doesn’t just capture a moment; it captures a truth. And in a world that’s constantly trying to sanitize death, that truth is more important than ever.
So, the next time you read a line like ‘Dying is a thankless job,’ don’t just let it pass. Sit with it. Think about it. Let it haunt you. Because, as Liyanage shows, sometimes the most thankless jobs are the ones that teach us the most about what it means to be alive.
