I pass my time with the living dead <br />As I sit in my home, alone, <br />As spectres range through my fevered head, <br />I don't have a telephone, <br />I tend to avoid the world out there <br />And the folk who pass in the street, <br />So only go out in the night to roam <br />And hope that we'll never meet. <br /> <br />The world, to me, is an empty place <br />By the light of the gas-lamp glow, <br />I only roam historical streets <br />Of a hundred years or so, <br />My people walked in the streets and lanes <br />Where I drink my fill of the past, <br />The lives they lived, though over and done <br />Are the only ones that last. <br /> <br />I bury my head in ancient books <br />That tell of their living deeds, <br />The interactions and social factions <br />That answered most of their needs, <br />They come alive on the page to me <br />As I share their highs and lows, <br />Like Oscar Wilde with his sense of style <br />And the Edgar Allan Poes. <br /> <br />So many lives that were lived, then lost <br />That wouldn't have left a trace, <br />If someone hadn't written of them, <br />Had tried to capture each face, <br />Their words are part of our culture now <br />As some writer set them down, <br />And these, the writers are dead themselves <br />But their books are their renown. <br /> <br />A life is only ever complete <br />With the last and final breath, <br />We cease to be the man in the street <br />The end of the book is death. <br />But life is there on the printed page <br />To entrance with what they said, <br />And I'm content to enrich my life, <br />To walk with the living dead. <br /> <br />11 June 2014<br /><br />David Lewis Paget<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-living-dead-16/
