Emperor Jahangir, 1616

According to Dylan Thomas' fans - I know a few - Shakespeare and Dryden were on the welcoming committee when Dylan entered Elysium, and when he saw the new arrival, they say, Shakespeare did slap Dryden on his back with glee.

Elysium is a rather odd place where mankind's literary geniuses, and everybody else who had been foolish enough to put something into print, must sit out their expiry periods. Nobody is exempt, no matter how lousy a hack you are, or whether you merely couldn’t resist to write a column in the school’s yearbook, but then had been good for the rest of your life. Only after the last copy here on Earth has disappeared, we are permitted to enter the ivory portal to the bliss of oblivion.

For most of us a mere matter of decades, a century at most, although lately the administration up high, I have heard, has begun to worry about our electronic media and started an extensive construction program to accommodate uncounted masses. It is advisable to disconnect your printer. Still, small worries compared to the heavy hitters. We common mortals pass our remaining time in makeshift barracks, a bit like the concentration camps, without the barbed wire and the guards, and with a chain of 7/11 shops around the corner. The food is a bit better than in Birkenau, but not much. The heavyweights on the other hand are immediately spirited away from Charon’s barge and without the usual chicaneries by the celestial administration board a train of which the tracks lead into dense and impenetrable woods. Somewhere deep inside the forest opens to a shallow glen - the actual Elysium.

I must admit, it is a cute train, with a choo choo engine in front, bravely puffing steam into the bracing air. Elysium, too, looks rather cute, more like a medieval town and very authentic, without any electricity and plumbing. Everywhere the visitor is greeted by timber frames under steep shingle roofs and there is a restaurant with a view.

Normally tourists are not permitted, but in the interest of annual budgeting the management can’t help granting exceptions, now and then; but you better be dead, before even considering. The market place at the medieval well and the wisteria covered wall with the memorial plaque are favorite photo-ops. The plaque reads: "In honor of the great Caliph Omar, who had ordered to burn the books of Alexandria's great library." The otherwise unassuming memorial is the center from which the narrow but picturesque lanes extend into ivy and clustering roses. Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, visitor visas expire after 24 hours.

For a dead poet, especially for a true genius, afterlife can be a long stretch. Many take on a job: Shakespeare owns the town's haberdashery and oversees the mint; Jane Austen is taking care of the ladies and Dante runs a poultry farm. The Italian swears on a fully mechanized battery system. "Free range is for wimps,” he uses to say, "this is a chicken farm, not a holiday in hell!" Dryden is the man with the connections and the mayor's right hand and secretary. The mayor himself is a bald headed figure with a sweet expression under sunken eyes and has an unpronounceable name.

Before the flood he had composed a cuneiform poem on clay tablets which by now should have safely crumbled to compost. He had already handed over the town's keys to his successor and was on his way to the portal of oblivion, where his friends were waiting to wave him farewell. It’s always an occasion, with balloons and firework, but Charles Dickens - the town-crier - caught up and informed the poor soul that some blithering busybody of an archeologist just had filled the clay tablet’s impressions on the mud with a plaster cast and so had managed to restore fragments of the text and even prepared to publish a translation.

Our man broke down in tears. This was the second time of such a cock up: every evening the hairy figure of Neanderthal man is frequenting James Joyce’s tavern and drinking himself into a stupor. He is a man of few words and has no idea why he should be here - Neanderthal men were never in the habit of publishing their memoirs, or writing novels, or even say something - but somehow the administration got the study by the famous pathologist and physician Virchow in the wrong box. In his forensic study, Dr. Virchow had referred to the skeleton as if it was a real patient with an ID and a legend, and correctly had diagnosed the individual’s rachitic deformities - who says Neanderthals couldn’t be ill - and apparently this confused the immortal administrator. He is still confused, and Neanderthal man is still drinking.

Luckily nobody ever told him about Dr. Virchow who has opened a little jewelry shop, turning tooth fillings into pretty rings and bracelets. The good doctor refuses to write prescriptions, so people ought to get their daily fix under the counter from De Quincy’s pharmacy.

Every newcomer discovers very soon, that there is a sex-life after death, but once you have screwed out your brains, what else is there left to do? The forests surrounding the town are dense and infinitely wide. On February 2^nd, 1852, James Fenimore Cooper went for a walk into the woods, he said he would be back for supper, but nobody has seen him ever since.

However the food is real good. Every day Marcel Proust is handing out leaflets with the day's menue. He and Oscar Wilde are the joined proprietors of the only Restaurant in town, and believe me, it is a gold mine.

There is also a jail. Only publishers occupy the filthy four by four cells with barely enough space to lay down on the cement floor. There are no bunks or mattresses. The warden, Thomas Jefferson, I am told, has completely reformed his opinions. So, if a published genius feels like getting even, he can ask Mr. Jefferson for the key and to his heart's delight beat up his own publisher: not because the man had refused publishing him, but on the contrary. There are days when geniuses queue up in double line and nobody yet has ever missed his turn. Publishers with a proven record of rejecting manuscripts on the other hand, are allowed certain privileges. If they wish, they can take an hour’s walk into the forest.

Since February 2^nd, 1852, none of these people ever returned from their stroll. When Jefferson’s deputy followed the trail of the homing devices he usually found it in a puddle of blood next to a heap of torn off limbs and a badly mangled body. Probably the work of a bear or something. One day the remains will simply disappear. Nobody really wants to know.

So doubtlessly Dylan Thomas, too, is lining up at the jail to take his turn with the publishers. Especially those who never paid him a dime and draw huge profits from expired copyrights. Poor bastards. For them it is eternal life in a full body plaster cast.