Classic Poem

A certain phrase in your last letter thrills me.
It is a playful phrase. Do you remember it — —
" Your cats clambering over the walls of Paradise? "
I like your kindly whimsicality.

But I doubt that my little friends would ever clamber over the walls. For there,
if the furry shades were to eat at all, they might explore the viny entanglements,
about dusk, to prey on the drowsy bird with its toothsome nestling.
Or they might frequent the top of the walls, at midday, thus to hunt the chipmunk — —
for I dream of the old stone pasture walls of my remote New England,
or rather of such now towering high, austere, imposing, but no lovelier.
I doubt that any one of my cats would descend at the other side, however,
even to go in search of kindly whimsicality.
My cats and I are obliviously happy together, on our earthly acres — —
but we should never care for a heavenly herding in a pasture.

I do not want to enter Paradise.
I do not like its plan, its personnel.
If I should be forced to live through another existence,
I should aspire to one great happiness,
that of pausing outside the walls — —
not by the gates, and not with the loud laudations in hearing,
but at a spot far off from all such sounds,
and from the presence of dogs, which would no doubt enter with their faithful masters.
There, alone, I should raise my voice in the voweled call
that had once resounded about our acres, and beyond them, echoing,
now by day,
now by night,
and had brought my little friends to me.
scampering homeward in various directions,
and calling to me in their own fashion.
There I should stand, calling, waiting for all to come — —
all save those who died too young to remember my voice. For many are dead — —

and mine is the hand that poured each vial of mercy.
I hope that mine alone will be the hand to kill the rest.
As the pioneer of the prairie killed the helpless of his heart, at hearing
the yell of the triumphant savage, so shall I kill my own.
I know too much about a fate of which my little friends know nothing,
ever to let them live when I no longer hold my earthly acres.

But at the walls of Paradise I should call my cats together.
Greetings over, I should turn away, happy, obliviously happy,
to wander off with all following, to wander thus forever — —
for I know that they would follow me, all obliviously happy,
as they had always followed me about our earthly acres.
If such as I have visioned were to be our common fate in heaven,
I know that my cats would scorn the very walls of Paradise.