Dead vs Live

Years ago I worked in a natural history museum and was profoundly effected by being surrounded by dead things.

Dead animals, drawers full and displays of dead birds. I remember thinking they kill those birds so they can study them.

 

Here is a poem from the New Yorker this month by Barbara Tran

 

              Imaginary Menagerie

 

In the end, it was

as in the beginning: no one

learned anything.  What was alive

was killed and posed,

stuffed, put on display. The remaining live

wandered around amongst the dead,

wondering what they looked like

when they were alive and in the positions

in which they were now posed, which the live

could have witnessed in life

had they not killed

the now

dead.