May 21, 2012

The Dante Trick

-Hal Sirowitz
February 11, 2011

“Life is so short, it’s like a vapor. Here today, gone tomorrow. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing at all. So I don’t have any advice for anybody … because death is quicker than you think.” Beverly Valentine, funeral home director in Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium, edited by John Bowe, Marisa Bowe & Sabin Streeter (Crown, 2000).


The good thing about being Jewish,
is that you have to be buried in the ground

the next day, father said. The funeral home
doesn’t have the time to give you

plastic surgery, hair dyeing or whatever
they do to make the dead look better than

they did in life as if heaven requires
better looks. But if you have

the bad luck of dying a day before
the Sabbath, then you have to wait

two days to receive your heavenly rewards.
Because if there’s one thing I know,

God won’t let you into the afterlife until
you’re safely buried in the ground.

Otherwise, you could pull the Dante
trick – claim you’ve already visited hell

and write about it. God doesn’t usually
allow sightseeing visits to his domains.

Hal Sirowitz is the author of four collections of poetry with a fifth one forthcoming from Backwaters Press in Nebraska. His first book, Mother Said, was published by Random House and was translated into nine languages, including Hebrew. He's the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York.