When the bell rings
at close of day, none of them will go home.
When the next morning bell
rings, they’ll still be sitting there.
You don’t assign homework to the dead.
You don’t expect them to answer questions today
you posed the night before.
Every moment for the dead is the only moment
and it’s a myth that they are eager
to talk to us anyway.
All you can really do is lecture them
as they sit, dulled
and neither willing nor unwilling
to hear you. No one has a clue
about what it takes to graduate.
Not the teachers, not the administration,
certainly not the dead themselves,
and they couldn’t care less.
If they were to move on it would amuse
and astonish them at least as much as it would us.
So: why take such a job? Why teach
at a school for the dead? Because
though it’s a remote chance, a miracle
might happen — but mostly because the dead
can’t die before your eyes from gunshots
or abuse or disease. Because the worst
that can happen there
is nothing at all.
Dark Matter 