Diatribe Against the Dead
The dead are selfish:
they make us cry and don't care,
they stay quiet in the most inconvenient places,
they refuse to walk, we have to carry them
on our backs to the tomb
as if they were children. What a burden!
Unusually rigid, their faces,
accuse us of something, or warn us;
they are the bad conscience, the bad example,
they are the worst things in our lives always, always.
The bad thing about the dead
is that there is no way you can kill them.
Their constant destructive labor
is for that reason incalculable .
Insensitive, indifferent, obstinate, cold,
with their insolence and their silence
they don't realize what they undo.
.
by Angel Gonzalez
from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry
Vintage Books, 1996
.