"Curiosity" by Alastair Reid

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 him 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 him 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 he loves too much, is irresponsible,
is changeable, marries too many wives,
deserts his children, chills all dinner tables
with tales of his nine lives.
Well, he is lucky. Let him 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 he has 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 hell is where, to live, they have to go.

"Propinquity" by Alastair Reid

Propinquity

is the province of cats. Living by accident,

lapping the food at hand or sleeking down

in an adjacent lap when sleep occurs to them,

never aspiring to consistency

in homes or partners, unaware of property,

cats take their chances, love by need or nearness

as long as the need lasts, as long as the nearness

is near enough. The code of cats is simply

to take what comes. And those poor souls who claim

to own a cat, who long to recognize

in bland and narrowing eyes a look like love,

are bound to suffer should the expect

cats to come purring punctually home.

Home is only where the food and the fire are,

but might be anywhere. Cats fall on their feet,

nurse their own wounds, attend to their won laundry,

and purr at appropriate times. O folly, folly,

to love a cat, and yet

we address with love the distance that they keep,

the hair-raising way they have, and easily blame

all their abandoned litters and torn ears

on some marauding tiger, well aware

that cats themselves do not care.

Yet part of us is cat. Confess—

love turns on accident and needs

nearness; and the various selves we have

accrue from our cat-wanderings, our chance

crossings. Imagination prowls at night,

cat-like, among odd possibilities.

Only our dog-sense brings us faithfully home,

makes meaning out of accident, keeps faith,

and, cat-and-dog, the arguments go at it.

But every night, outside, cat-voices call

us out to take a chance, to leave

the safety of our baskets and to let

what happens happen. “Live, live!” they catcall.

“Each moment is your next! Propinquity,

Propinquity is all!”