------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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 that do not know
        that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

                             --  Alastair Reid   (1926-)