(After Baudelaire)
When Hemingway
finally dropped off the twig,
his carcass
wrecked by drink and other problems,
he stepped into
the boat and flipped Charon a tip
and sat in the
back with a flask of Cuban rum.
Exposing their
breasts and their naked flanks
would-be
actresses twisted and writhed, still
hopeful of a
role, apart from the casting couch,
and moans and
whimpers followed them.
Kissinger, in
the flickering dark, was demanding
the fame due to
him; Nixon buttonholed the dead,
groaning on the
shore, pointing out to them
the journalists who
had hunted him from office.
Pale with grief,
Marilyn, dazed and skeletal,
clung to her
treacherous President, once her lover,
and begged of
him a final, parting smile
as kind and
sweet as his initial promises.
Stein – erect,
dressed in black – stood
like a statue at
the helm, her eyes fixed on
the bow cutting
the black tide, but Hemingway
stared at the
wake disappearing into the dark.
— John Tranter