Clinton
This from Seamus Heaney
A DOG WAS CRYING TONIGHT IN WICKLOW ALSO (in memory of Donatus Nwoga)

When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message:
They wanted to be let back into the house of life.
They didn't want to end up lost for ever
Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that got blown away into nothing.
Instead they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and heading back for the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretchings 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 was meant to tell all this to Chukwu).

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 Chukwu first,
The toad who'd overheard in the beginning
What the dog was meant to tell. 'Human beings,' he said
(And here the toad was trusted absolutely),
'Human beings want death to last forever.'

Then Chukwu saw the people's souls in birds
Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset
To a place where there would be neither roosts 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
Couuld change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves
In obliterated light, the toad in mud,
The dog crying all night behind the corpse house.