MYSTERY

The mystery is over; as usual the irritating lovers

Who complicated things so the story wasn't a novella

Had the last word, promising to spend eternity together

But secretly relieved their eternity ends with the book.

The murderer has been unmasked, has confessed,

Has gone mad; has killed himself, has been

Dragged off in handcuffs, silent, remorseful, and spitting venom.

In the blank pages that follow, the first corpse,

Dead since the eighth paragraph, sits up,

Accepts a cigarette from the second corpse

(Who died because She Knew Too Much),

Looks glumly into empty space and speaks.

"Do you feel solved? I don't; not at all. That detective

Didn't like me, didn't understand me. I'm sure

If you hadn't died too he'd have let the murderer go."

They smoke silently  -- it's the 1930s so smoking

Is still good for you and anyway they’re not

Going to get deader. "Why are we here?"

Asks Corpse Two." I'm not speaking metaphysically;

Why are we here in particular; why are there blank pages

So we linger when everyone else is gone?"

"It's all symbols; it's all hidden meanings. Blank pages

Mean the story is not quite over or stand

For what we might have done if we'd lived

There's no writing on them because once we died

We stopped doing much." "We're smoking;

We're chatting."  “But only to each other.

The book's been shut; the reader

Is already starting to forget us while he thinks

Of how he could have written a mystery

So much better than this -- one in which the lovers

Might've been as amusing as they thought themselves."