ABSTRACT
In one of his last published poems about AIDS, the distinguished Canadian gay writer Michael Lynch graphically describes how, for many of us, death has ceased to be an event; it has literally become a way of life, an era of dying set to last well into the next millennium. Week after week, year after year, it goes on. In modern times no other single constituency has lost so many as a result of epidemic illness. Outside of wartime or great famine, mortal illness and death on this scale is unknown, marking our experience as unique.
