Dead Puppets May Move in the Bright and Glorious Day, Yet Not Behold the Sky

Can anything be said

To be dead that never,

In its present form, lived?

Sometimes someone writes Mars

Or the Moon are dead. Or

Landscapes that have sparse lives,

Like deserts or ice fields,

Are depicted as dead.

So, lacking or seeming

To lack life equals dead?

Now that’s just sad. Traherne

Wrote of moving puppets

As dead, a double trick,

The lifeless in motion

That, never living, died.

We’re almost there. Machines

That never lived march on,

Dead as the whole dead sky.