We live in an age of diminishing returns. Even if you manage a second coming, beware the form it takes. What you bring back is never what you lost. I’m reminded of a curious story I heard years ago regarding the aftermath of Hiroshima. Only weeks after the explosion leveled the city, residents discovered that the bomb had not only left the underground organs of plants intact; it had stimulated them. Bright blooms pushed through rubble with disturbing disregard, proving once and for all that death, not art, imitates life. A resurrection is like a foreboding, a song that never rises from anywhere but the grave.

But even this explanation is too simple. For among the charred wreckage of a fire, rescuers will sometimes discover a whole pineapple where once a marketplace stood. Suddenly, the last story has no meaning, because every last breaks forward into a next. And even last things last forever.