Can Wife Beaters Go to Heaven?

All wife beaters go to Heaven
To be with all the wives
Who were beaten or neglected
Throughout their earthly lives.

And they stitch until their fingers bleed
All on their wives’ white gowns,
And they crawl along the golden streets
Picking pebbles for their crowns,

And they sprawl in Heaven’s gutters
Where all step upon their backs,
And they toil up glassy mountains
With their wives in rickshaw hacks.

And they gasp and sweat and struggle,
And the radiance nearly blinds,
But such reverence and penitence
Pervade their feeble minds

That they cannot pause to draw breath
Without falling stupefied
Headlong upon the shining streets
Where the splendid ladies ride.

And the wives can grant no mercy,
As they might have done on earth,
For they too are being punished
For not teaching men their worth.

All wife beaters go to Heaven
For reasons plain to tell:
Their first thousand years in Heaven
They believe they are in Hell.