Every night in her childhood, going to sleep, she traveled
the paths of the dead. It was easy then to go
Where she could not abide in her other consciousness.
This was the avenue Caesar the mastiff had wandered.
Father said he had run away, and the children nodded solemnly
knowing the kind old beast could hardly walk down the stairs.
And she could see there traces of Grandmother’s passage—
a bitch of a cruel cook who left smudges of pastry flour
Everywhere she touched. Along the inward-slanting road
patches of it glowed with the faint luminescence
Of fungal rot. Night after night she assayed that way,
going deeper with every journey. When Brother went under,
She thought: now he will finally see me, now he will guide me
all the way in. But as she came to the battered gate
Beyond which he waited, she woke in the joy of her own sweat.
Now all this returns to her. For years she had forgotten,
Believing the vaporous sleep of those who live their lives.
What prose would it take, what pose, what ink and paper,
What postage, to send this note of reminder to the others
still hanging back on the decent side of the ambivalent lintel?
