I was moving down the bank
toward the boat, lost
in the mob of newly dead,
when scowling Charon
stepped from the mist
to grab me by my shoulder:
“You’ll go no farther
till you’re dead.”
I thought: What’s music
to a brute like this,
and yet the chord I struck
hit him like a blow.
His face softened.
He sat down right there
in the stinking mud,
chin propped on fists, listening.