"Curiosity" by Alistair Reid (read by Pasho)

"Curiosity" by Alistair Reid (read by Pasho)

God bless. Pacho's Chachos for life! 

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
 the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
 to see what death was like, having no cause
 to go on licking paws, or fathering
 litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
 is dangerous enough. To distrust
 what is always said, what seems
 to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
 leave home, smell rats, have hunches
 do not endear cats to those doggy circles
 where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
 are the order of things, and where prevails
 much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
 will not cause us to die--
 only lack of it will.
 Never to want to see
 the other side of the hill
 or that improbable country
 where living is an idyll
 (although a probable hell)
 would kill us all.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
 worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
 are changeable, marry too many wives,
 desert their children, chill all dinner tables
 with tales of their nine lives.
 Well, they are lucky. Let them be
 nine-lived and contradictory,
 curious enough to change, prepared to pay
 the cat price, which is to die
 and die again and again,
 each time with no less pain.
 A cat minority of one
 is all that can be counted on
 to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
 on each return from hell
 is this: that dying is what the living do,
 that dying is what the loving do,
 and that dead dogs are those who do not know
 that dying is what, to live, each has to do.
 
 

- Alastair Reid