Charles Darwin’s Body In The Westminster Abbey
The fever rose, the pain increased
But there is no way to know if it was a life, death
O (the) r –
throbbing of awareness:
of inevitable shock,
Transmitted
In kilowatts,
Rising by degrees.
The closing of the throat
Caused by the choking on
The final farewell of the fittest.
It is!
The final paper cut:
to the soft skin between knuckles, calling our attention
to the pale blue lines leaking the screaming stream
beneath the calloused membrane meant to protect it.
It is!
The final briar’s branch:
grabbing the ankle only if you climb out of the rough
patches too quickly.
It is!
The heartache:
Posing as bellyache -the heart has sunk so low,
given over to gravity’s siren call.
After orbiting safely so many times
The final betrayal completes itself
when these simple mechanical organs
are still and below the earth
that sang so severely: the symptom we cannot locate.
Safely in a sterile cell with billowing walls
The aged mumble dryly
The science didn’t work: While machines hum the wrong
mournful tune and the heart beat it’s beak on the bamboo cage of ribs
Organizing hollow syncopated
Pleas for freedom.
We learn death like children learn to speak.
First learning to listen to the sounds of it
the feel of it in our mouths and hearts.
Knowing all the while it is nothing more than
An animal we will never tame, never out-run.
He fumbled with the call: God or ambulance?
And I?
I called to the animal;
Then the earth
that will receive this broken heart into it’s clodded
embrace
where they all lie like seeds under it’s unassuming sod and stone.
