ARE YOU DEAD? : SONNET 175

Are You Dead?

Sonnet 175

"Are you dead?" -- soon you will get a call,

If you are old and living all alone;

The question, hard though on your ear does fall,

Will be imploring you, in its each tone,

To answer you are fatly alive and kicking;

And if you don't, there will be a hearse

At your door, from the inside in latching,

And open they will break the door, your daughters 

And sons, and move your still and stone dead body

To a Ghat where it on a pyre will burn to ashes --

Lucky to get from them this final courtesy,

Before your body wholly decomposes,

Unseen, unheard inside the homebound trap:

This's all what means to me the Chinese app.

©️ N P Samal