1.
Some of the dead are curious, they will walk for years
through their dark house, asking for news
of where it was they have left, from newer arrivals.
They have capacious memories--they all do, the dead,
but most spend all their unlimited time
sifting through the same cold ashes;
nor do they travel, much.
Only a few,
the most curious of the curious,
to learn how things were
even before they first saw
the living world's light,
seek out old neighbors
(rarely their parents)
of similarly curious mind,
who have themselves sought out strangers,
foreigners even; sometimes they learn a language
they never knew, alive; they walk years further
into the dark--time and space are alike
to them--it is slow going in the dark, and crowded,
but they continue back and away
and down. They encounter others
like them; they exchange stories, part. Somewhere
very deep and dark (but light is nothing to them,
why should it be?), and not at all crowded,
an almost-ape receives them:
not too well suited for walking
but very curious,
not too well suited for language
but still in love
with the stories they bring with the news-all those years of news
of where and who it left, and what became of them all.
2.
I learned this from the dead when I was asleep.
Their house
is not ours (theirs is always dark), but there are cracks sometimes
in the walls between our houses, in the floorboards
of their parlor above our cellar,
in the floorboards of our kitchen, our living room, our bedroom
above their capacious cellars. Sometimes someone sees
someone through the cracks; sometimes someone speaks.
I learned all of this from the dead, when I was asleep.
