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Among royals
the barber of the king
observing the results of chance
is alone in his private wonder
that rites at court grow every day
that the queen’s hand challenges the wind
that a skull is dead to prayers
Poems on the topic: skull
Poems on the topic “skull” on Poets.by.
2013 in photos: British Isles
On an island, I looked for other islands:
smaller, emptier, round as up-turned
coracles barnacled to the shore.
I watched yachts catch the only sunlight
and thought of prized, greenstone axeheads
sunk in ceremonial lakes.
Smaller and smaller my longing grew
until it could almost fit in a watery pocket.
And yet these islands could not be kept:
they were Holy Islands, they were bird islands,
they were columns of cooled magma,
they were the skulls of ancestors
who had been killed three times—
once each for sky, land and water.
Here are their collars of bog iron,
their round houses roofed with turf.
Next Life
The skull whose name was smoke spoke
worm words. Its missing teeth hissed
from the gizzard of an owl.
How odd, I thought, to be a skull
& haunt a body from within!
The air smelled of rotting
leaves; it was October.
Icy feathers began to form
on the edges of grass blades—
the only kind of next life
that made sense to me, stoned as I was.
My gut gurgled polyphonically.
I considered fear as if from a great height.
* * *
I'm dead
a bald skull
on a shelf.
To a Skull on My Bookshelf
O bony relic of forgotten days,
Which, from my bookshelf, dominates the room,
Your empty sockets, with sardonic gaze,
Follow me weirdly in the deepening gloom!
I often think, if sudden speech returned,
You might reveal that secret, grisly jest
You're grinning at—or tell me what you've learned
Of that dark realm to which we're all addressed.
By what rude hands were you exhumed, and why
Wrenched from your body in its earthy bed?
Who knows but such indignity will I
Receive at other hands, when I am dead,
And, strangely resurrected, may adorn
The wall or desk of one as yet unborn!
Ninety-Six
I placed the skull
on a stump, saying,
"There. Now you
can see better."
Knowing this
was not so, and, shamed,
I stayed an hour,
seeing for the deer.
Indian Skull
Some one dug this up and brought it
To our house.
In the dark upper hall, I see it dimly,
Looking at me through the glass.
Where dancers have danced, and weary people
Have crept to their bedrooms in the morning,
Where sick people have tossed all night,
Where children have been born,
Where feet have gone up and down,
Where anger has blazed forth, and strange looks have passed,
It has rested, watching meanwhile
The opening and shutting of doors,
The coming and going of people,
The carrying out of coffins.
Earth still clings to its eye-sockets,
It will wait, till its vengeance is accomplished.
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