Here's the line that grabbed me by the collar:
..Smile, death, as you fasten the blades to my feet for me,
It's not till the following line that we see that the reference is to ice-skating, and the juxtaposition of "blades" and "feet" is startling.
I love it when poems give this sort of whip-lash effect, which would be lost if the skating reference had come first.
The atmosphere of the poem reminds me of so many translations of Chinese "Death Poems" - a tradition of short poems written by Zen and Taoist masters just before their deaths. For instance:
Earth, river, mountain:
Snowflakes melt in air.
How could I have doubted?
Where's north? south? east? west?
- Dangai
Finally out of reach -
No bondage, no dependency,
How calm the ocean,
Towering the Void.
- Tessho
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