Poetry Feature:
'Only the Dead': Vietnam

Readers Finish the Phrase, 'Only the dead . . .'

Without mentioning to them Plato's phrase, we invited readers to write their own finishes. Most respondents, as expected, completed the phrase, taking a rhythmic cue from the cadence as indicated. Quite unexpected, but certainly welcome, five submitted poems from four to nearly forty lines in length. Ed.

~ . ~ . ~

Only the dead know the final truth, and they speak not.
-- Alyssa A. Lappen

Only the dead know how to wait.
-- Robert Klein Engler

Only the dead have peace.
(Or, as Oedipus says,
"Let no man consider himself lucky until he is in the grave.")
-- Judith Werner

Only the dead fester in your recollections
like maggots churning in a skull without pulp.
-- Angelo Verga

Only the dead know it all.
Only the dead can no longer keep trying.
Only the dead can no longer improve themselves.
-- Paulette Ryder

Only the dead have lived.
-- Edwin Torres

Only the dead ride the hearse in Brooklyn.
(Just ask Thomas Wolfe).
They know where to go!
-- Valery Oisteanu

Only the dead are entitled to laughter.
-- Joel Allegretti

Only the dead can endure the perfect sigh.
--Brenda (Morisse) Tricarico

Only the dead decay with no regret.
-- Elena Kondracki

Only the dead have figured out
they're the ones who are alive.
-- Thom Ward

Only the dead live forever.
-- Marlene Vidibor

Only the dead know the answer.
-- Blake Dawson

Only the dead know the real story...
Only the dead know the fabric...
Only the dead know where the bodies are buried...
-- Paul McDonald

Only the dead dine on the dust of the grave.
-- Rafiq Kathwari

1) Only the dead know how to keep a secret--its heart of hearts.
2) Only the dead would fire up the SPICE electronic circuit analysis software to get the answer to six digits of precision, yet still not understand Ohm's law, Krchoff's, and how to deal with resistors in series and parallel.
3) Only the dead can see what an entirely different thing a period is from a comma, a colon or a semi-colon.
-- Tom Devaney

Only the dead know that living is impossible.
-- George Dickerson

Only the dead are alive and well and living in Fresno.
-- Suzanne Hartman Dickerson

Only the dead are all equally innocent
but exert more power for good
and evil than anyone alive.
-- Elaine Schwager

~ . ~

Only the Dead

Marc Levy

send dark chills
up my nightmare spine.
Waking from sleep,
they bury themselves
so that I may give them meaning.

~ . ~

Untitled
Edmund Pennant

Only the dead
are quick to deny
they die.

The rest instead
play dead
intermittently.

~ . ~

Untitled
Robert Bove

Only the dead aren't men--
-- neither are ghosts.
They're only dead days absently dropped

from Kronos' pockets, loss scribbled
large across the stars,
gardens abandoned to caltrop thistle.

While spineless sophists explain weeds,
the skies black with starling, with grackle,
with lawyers enough to sue sun moon,

a gourmet army teaches dung pies, ash
crepes
vacuum of Pantheon, lexicon of Babel,
and Hannibal's ovens
to magpies mockingbirds quavering
on barbed wire fence.

~ . ~

Only the Dead . . .

Know secret secrets,
Ours and theirs:
They lie low,
Watch us as we come
And go,
Hiding invisible smiles,
Out of habit, smothering
Silent giggles or screams
As they walk through our closed doors
Nodding their heads,
All their suspicions confirmed

It's that moment as you gaze
Into your mirror--a shadow
Somewhere in your reflected boudoir
Makes you turn
A second, look hard,
Shiver,
Wonder if something's seen
The grin you were exchanging
With yourself
As your great beauty
Takes you in

And as for the secrets of the dead,
From the other side--
You'd shake your head and stare
The secret is there's no secret,
The same old same old,
Day after day,
And watching as they do
Past, present, and future
They see their own secrets
Held up to the sun
Which, of course, has stopped
So we're with them
Watching, too.

~ . ~

A Visit from Po Chu-i

The old man arrived with the geese, or just after.
As I opened the door, I saw him looking at trees,
where I imagine, he'd seen them pass over.

His clothes were dappled with grease
and smelled of cooking fires. He sat
in the Taoist way, without ceremony,

disdaining a chair for a corner with the cat,
who rolled, offering her belly.
The old man obliged, scratching the matted

fur with fingers stained by ink and exile,
and began to sing, quietly, of being barefoot
in winter, like her.

At the time, it didn’t seem strange
that I could understand his Mandarin,
or that a dead man--for he was clearly dead,

and not a ghost--should have stopped for a visit
on his migration south from the frozen lakes.
I offered tea, which he accepted

in the Taoist way, without ceremony.