Top Hat

                          This skull had a tongue in it, and

                          could sing once.

                                                          Hamlet V.1.

The strangeness of it.

Bony carapace of all we are

yet never seen short  of death

when plucked from some foul

smelling trench where once

prayers, other upward words,

had passed into wind and distance

to be forgotten sooner

or later.

Think 28 bones of intricate suture

joined jig-saw like as though for

a long war or slow decline through

years unfriendly, unforeseen, not

to be trusted.

Think cerebral hemispheres,

gray matter, white matter, pons

medulla, and the crucial lobes.

Think furtive swish of liquid

as you bend and dive, race madly

through whatever days allowed.

Great melon ripe with who you are,

repository of song and word, your

past and present, frail gropings

toward some future imagined

or believed.

Is it then the central irony of

all human passage that the

boned vault in which the treasure

lies knows nothing of you

and everything.