Read?

The moment when life ends can be a terrifying one, especially when one is unprepared for it. Soldiers on the battlefield scream, murder victims expire in terror. Who has not found themselves, in the last two weeks, trying to imagine the last moments of the doomed passengers on TWA Flight 800? The Aug. 5 New Yorker's lead story, on an earlier plane crash, features the last words from the cockpit, and they are not pleasant reading.

Yet it is possible for humans to die both fully conscious and in composure of soul -- as "Japanese Death Poems," edited by Yoel Hoffman, attests. The poems collected by Hoffman are part of a centuries-old Japanese tradition in which Zen monks, samurai and others compose poems at the moment of death.

Herewith, some of those remarkable documents.

ah tell me what ya think of this.

In the last 2 weeks i haven't thought about the last moments about the passengers on TWA flight 800.

ok...