dog-jackal-god-judge
Follower-on. Latecomer. Always backward,
a turn of the ears, of fine hairs on the ears, of the head.
A finer sense of motion. An arrière-garde.
An interest in the future of the living
as it is figured
in the unsatisfiable
demands of the dead.
•
My chambers are lit from within, or else
from above, like
embers, unilaterally.
I study what you call spontaneity.
The life in which I can learn,
albeit after the fact, what all of you
have done with yourselves—going nowhere, seeing
every piquant possibility—
turned out to be
the only life for me.
•
Dog lovers, I have learned, have feline souls, requiring
companionship they cannot “find within,”
whereas the poor souls and pilgrims who look up to cats
admire their independence and amorality,
we ourselves being already
“guilty as sin.”
•
I watch the gate.
Why do you not go through?
Then there would be no one to watch the gate.
•
Where would you place yourself?
I cannot say,
given the obvious conflicts of interest;
as long as I stay
at my post, without respite or rest,
nobody else can either. Not knowing is best.