A skull rests on my table

Clean, bleached, with all its teeth in place,

Eye cavities intact, forehead round and smooth,

Caucasian, male, overcome by death

In middle middle age.

I ask it questions.

Did you defy a bishop in your time?

Win for yourself a wife?

Live under authority or accept obedience

From men of lesser intellect?

Was life sweet or harsh?

Did decisions come easy or hard?

Did death which stripped you of your flesh

Creep up behind you on a winter night

Or did you wrestle year after weary year

Before the ultimate capitulation?

I ask these questions but no answers come

Or, if they do, I have no ears to hear.

October 1967