The Dog Was Crying To-night Night in Wicklow Also
In memory of Donatus Nwoga
When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chuckwu with a message:
They wanted to be let back to the house of life.
They didn’t want to end up lost forever
like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that get blown away to nothing.
Instead, they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and headed back for the same old roots
And the same bright airs and wing-stretching each morning
Death would be like a night spent in the wood:
At first light they’d be back in the house of life.
(The dog meant to tell all this to Chuckwu.)
But death and human beings took second place
When he trotted off the path and started barking
At another dog in broad daylight just barking
Back at him from the far bank of a river.
And that is how the toad reached Chuckwu first,
The toad who’d overheard in the beginning
What the dog meant to tell. “Human beings, he said
(And here the toad was trusted absolutely),
“Human beings want death to last forever.”
Then Chuckwu saw the people’s souls in birds
Coming toward him like black spots off the sunset
To a place where there would be neither roots nor trees
Nor any way back to the house of life.
And his mind reddened and darkened all at once
And nothing that the dog would tell him later
Could change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves
In obliterated light, the toad in mud,
The dog crying out all night behind the corpse house.
.
By Seamus Heaney