The Oakland Dog
I lay one happy night in bed
And dreamed that all the dogs were dead.
They'd all been taken out and shot
Their bodies strewed each vacant lot.
O'er all the earth, from Berkeley down
To San Leandro's ancient town,
And out in space as far as Niles
I saw their mortal parts in piles.
One stack upreared its ridge so high
Against the azure of the sky
That some good soul, with pious views,
Put up a steeple and sold pews.
No wagging tail the scene relieved:
I never in my life conceived
(I swear it on the Decalogue!)
Such penury of living dog.
The barking and the howling stilled,
The snarling with the snarler killed,
All nature seemed to hold its breath:
The silence was as deep as death.
True, candidates were all in roar
On every platform, as before;
And villains, as before, felt free
To finger the calliope.
True, the Salvationist by night,
And milkman in the early light,
The lonely flutist and the mill
Performed their functions with a will.
True, church bells on a Sunday rang
The sick man's curtain down-the bang
Of trains, contesting for the track,
Out of the shadow called him back.
True, cocks, at all unheavenly hours,
Crew with excruciating powers,
Cats on the woodshed rang and roared,
Fat citizens and fog-horns snored.
But this was all too fine for ears
Accustomed, through the awful years,
To the nocturnal monologues
And day debates of Oakland dogs.
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poem by Ambrose Bierce
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