Conclusion

After a vigorous life, a minor heart attack, and a debilitating fall out of a tree, Earle Birney suffered a heart attack in 1987 that left him brain damaged.  One of the tragic ironies of his life is that the poet who always feared aging and death, who "hated to be trapped or caged or enclosed, the man who was in favour of capital punishment because he could never have tolerated incarceration, the man who chose the subject of mercy-killing for his major poem, was to be confined to the chronic care ward of a hospital honouring the monarchy he despised in a city he disliked: Toronto's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, for the last eight years of his life."

What might this have to say about pursuing one's passion? About the ironies of life?