on the beauty and civility of death

On the eve of the eve of a very canonical birth, i'd rather think about the gender of death.

"Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility."
(E. Dickinson)

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"Wearing the new dress that she bought yesterday in a shop downtown, death goes to the concert. She is sitting alone in the box and, as she did during the rehearsal, she is looking at the cellist. Just before the lights went down, when the orchestra was waiting for the conductor to come, he noticed her. He wasn't the only musician to do so. Firstly because she was alone in the box, which, although not rare, wasn't that frequent an occurrence either. Secondly because she was pretty, possibly not the prettiest woman in the audience, but pretty in a very particular, indefinable way that couldn't be put into words, like a line of poetry whose ultimate meaning, if such a thing exists in a line of poetry, continuously escapes the translator."
(J. Saramago)