Charles Darwin’s Body In The Westminster Abbey

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.