Thirty Four Years After Abe Vigoda Died, Abe Vigoda Died

My wife has led an Abe Vigoda life.
Only now can she emerge from it, now

That Abe Vigoda has finally died.
She doesn't know who Abe Vigoda was,

Much less that a magazine reported
Him dead when he was sixty, a minor

Mistake re a minor celebrity
The year that she was born, a running joke

For thirty-four years since he posed
In a coffin holding the false headline.

Keats, Shelley, both of the Cranes, a Bronte
Or two, all could have fit the afterlife

Of Abe Vigoda's phony post-mortem.
Life's the only afterlife the living know.