‘In Hell, According to Gary Larson’

In hell, according to Gary Larson,
the maestro will spend eternity
in a room full of gap-toothed yokels,
straw in their hair, banjos on their knees:

And Bach, Shostakovich and Mahler,
and the first song he heard as a boy—
his mother singing Bizet in the kitchen,
shy both in her pain and in her joy—

and his father too the way he hummed those nights
when he had too much to drink, some tune
from his own dead father’s lips, the very tune
he ceased to hum the day his fingers died,

the very tune which the night of his own funeral
came for the maestro like a fist of smoke
and dragged him up the chimney into darkness,
away from the attentions of the womenfolk,

beyond the streetlights, up beyond the city,
and down again into some distant room
waiting on the far side of memory
where his father was once again a groom

seated before the piano, and his hands
moved like the hands of a lover, 
reaching out, feeling for another,
a New World—all will be forgotten.

For in hell, according to Gary Larson,
the maestro will spend eternity
in a small room full of sweaty yokels:
‘Oh Susanna, don’t you cry for me . .. ’