I Am Afraid to Own a Body
identity
lyric poem
austere
I am afraid to own a Body – I am afraid to own a Soul – Profound – precarious Property – Possession, not optional – Double Estate – entailed at pleasure Upon an unsuspecting Heir – Duke in a moment of Deathlessness And God, for a Frontier.
I Am Afraid to Own a Body - meaning Summary
Fear of Self as Possession
The poem expresses the speaker’s anxiety about inhabiting a body and soul seen as involuntary possessions. It frames selfhood as a double estate, an inheritance imposed on an unsuspecting heir, mixing images of ownership, nobility, and boundary. The closing lines link deathlessness, authority, and a divine frontier, suggesting unease about agency, mortality, and who ultimately holds claim to the self beyond life.
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