The Late Boat

Tedious inconvenience lingers

After death, which is the best evidence

I can find that long, sadistic fingers

Guided by exquisite intelligence

Arranged these groaning, sepia shadows

This twilit, weeping gloom, not to end things

But to make everything seem a gallows

From which we dangle, gasping offerings

To an omnipotent, patient sadist

With a galactic imagination

And there is a grey, bureaucratic twist:

Even the dead await transportation

When it arrives, we wish that it had not

Pity the spectral fish, in this boat, caught