Williams has said that it was a translation of Hadrian’s poem by poet W. S. Merwin that drew her to the topic of souls and Azrael. In the story “ANIMULA, VAGULA, BLANDULA,” Azrael and the Devil translate the poem for fun. Williams includes the poem in its entirety, in Latin, so the reader could venture their own translation. “Petted stray? Funny darling? Poor wanderer? Beloved vagrant?” brainstorm the angels. This superabundance of language in the face of the unknown and indescribable—we keep trying, don’t we? “Countless had been the versions of these five simple lines,” Williams writes. I sometimes think religious texts can elicit sublime feelings, not because they are direct messages from God, but because they are incredible concentrations of attention and translation. If you were able to cut into them, you could see the rings of time as you can in a tree trunk; every reader is cambium, hardening layer after layer of effort and understanding, expanding the text outward until it is thick like an ancient sequoia. Concerning the Future of Souls, and all of Joy Williams’s work, should be read in the same way. Not as prophecy, or proof of the divine, but as a seed of possibility, something that can grow wide, rooted, and alive. One must imagine the future—and see a forest. {read}