As I Look from Here

There isn’t much to tell, the old man said.

All I know is, there is nothing dead.

If this interests you, why welcome to it.

I’m glad you smile, there where you sit.

In a world of rhyme, to be dead is difficult.

Death is a sort of inconceivable insult

For what may be. There’s stillness, of course,

And there has been many a tired horse,

And many an immobile beetle, and things like that.

But that is far off from saying that

These things are dead. To be dead means having nothing good to do

With anything, anything old or new.

And that just can’t be. The Mediterranean agrees with me here;

Some waves seem to say so, as I look from here.