I sit on the shores of Limbo and I watch the men descend into Hades.
They are butchers and bakers and candlestick makers.
They are students and workers and elderly men.
They are mothers and fathers and babies unable to crawl.
Some men are happy and light about it.
They flit and coast their way from life.
Most men are scared.
They shuffle and tip toe their way in, only coming at all for their brothers urge them so.
Some men are starving for it.
They throw themselves down the staircase or plummet from the highest crag.
I sit on the shores of Limbo and I watch the men reach the bottom of their climb.
Some men proceed directly to Charon haply and energetic.
They give him their Obol and he readily accepts them on his passage.
Some men find they have no Obol and fretfully hang on the banks.
A few of these still approach Charon with courage and he accepts them evenly enough.
But most of these stay back and look on toward the boat guilty and longingly.
Many men do not notice Charon, upon arriving they look immediately away.
These congregate far away from the ferry and worry eternity away.
At my place on the shores of Limbo, I am often noted by Charon.
He extends a palm in my direction, for my Obol asking.
I have an Obol and I’ve made myself aware of Charon’s presence.
Yet, I turn the Obol in my hand, and do not give it him.
I sit on the shores of Limbo and I watch the men as each enters onto Charon’s skiff.
Charon accepts the man’s Obolus, if each has any, and motions him to sit.
The boatman positions himself behind the man and takes a clippers in his hand.
He shears the man’s hair and shaves his head.
Then he takes flint and steel and strikes them above the man’s clothes.
The sparks land upon the draperies and soon they are consumed.
Bald and naked as babes he ferries them across.
And only then do saints enter the fields, Elysium.
From where I sit on the shores of Limbo, I cannot easily see Elysium.
But sometimes, if I care to, I can wade out into dead Acheron.
And cold and wet I can make out the smallest part of the sunlit realm.
It is beauty.
The saints dance and sing and laugh.
I have never seen them bored or tired or irritable.
They are far happier than they were in life.
As butchers and bakers and candlestick makers.
As students and workers and elderly men.
As mothers and fathers and babies unable to crawl.
And I look at each in his bliss and I try to think
whether he was the butcher I saw entering.
Or the baker or the candlestick maker.
Or the student or the worker or the elderly man.
Or the mother or the father or the baby unable to crawl.
And I cannot tell.
All I can see is buttocks, belly and eye.
All I can see is head, hand and back.
All I can see is breast, penis and navel.
Where is the cleaver, the apron, and the wax?
Where is the bookbag, the overalls, and the cane?
Where is the rag, the belt, and the pram?
By which I had so easily identified them before.
And once I have finished looking, I return to again to the shore.
At my place on the shores of Limbo, I am often noted by Charon.
He extends a palm in my direction, for my Obol asking.
I have an Obol and I’ve made myself aware of Charon’s presence.
I am not ready to give up my clothes.
I know I will be happy, naked as a babe.
But will I still know me?
Wet and cold and dead,
I turn the Obol in my hand and I’ve yet to give it him.
