"Salvation Blues" by Rodney Jones

Many people here expect
the dead are not really dead.
Therefore, they resolve to live
as though they were not alive:

So softly the minor thirds,
So tenderly the major sevenths,
white gospel the elderly virgins
keep treading like chastity

until Franz Liszt, ravager and
destroyer of pianos,
critiques with a thunderstorm:

Remind us there is something 
to be dead about. Play like
you are alive, even if it is not true.