The Dead

The dead are watching.
They are listening.
They are distraught,
knowing what we don’t know
and worse, don’t want to know.

These subterraneans
have learned so much about life from death,
the brevity, the preciousness.

They miss the earth, knowing now
how much of earth they missed alive.

For instance,
agnostics miss church bells.
Atheists wished they had a cataphatic*
word for their godless courage,
not an apophatic* word for what they don’t believe.
Fanatics lament the doubt they could not know they had.

Departed bankers wish they had paid more exquisite
attention to silver, the smell of it, the sound,
silver’s eagerness to soften and reform.

Only gardeners and cooks
do not draw the pity of the dead.

The dead whisper to each other in disbelief,
disappointed by things important to us
that no longer matter to them.

The dead are hopeless,
not because they’re dead,
life is easy in the grave,
hopeless because want to help but can’t.

We won’t listen and learn from the dead.
There is nothing they can do for us substrata.

Their desire for the inscrutable
cannot penetrate our lust for certitude.

A choir of worms sings
For the Beauty of the Earth
as a requiem.

cataphatic = (Greek) stating a theological belief positively – God is . . .
apophatic = (Greek) stating a theological belief negatively – God is not . . .

see 12/12/16 blog for an explication