some guy gave this to me

Curiosity 
may have killed the cat, more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause 
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems, 
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams, 
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
does not endure him to doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity 
will not cause you to die...
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see 
the other side of the hill,
or that improbable country where living is an idyll
although a probably hell 
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tail
worth telling at all.

Dogs say he moves too often, is irresponsible, 
is changeable, marries too many wives,
deserts his children, chills all dinner tables 
with tales of his nine lives.
Well, he is lucky. Let him be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay the price,
which is to die and die again and again,
each time with less pain.

A cat, minority of one
is all that can be counted on 
to tell the truth. And what he has to tell
on each return from hell 
is this: That dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that hell is where to live, they have to go.