When all is said and done—
why, O Mam, why
make an idol of a skull—
and whose besides?
Does some ghost abide within,
speaking from polished
clefts and cracks,
which dismal death,
stern sculptor, carved and raised
above the rest—
where darkness crawls to skulk
and cower from the light,
a fact uncanny
that no lamp dispels
but only underscores?
And the Book—
amassed by hand and watchful eye
of Empire, Eternal Rome,
a whole age after
you already held it in your lap—
isn’t your skull a Midrash,
a key to unbolt
the secret fastened deep within?
And if so—when it comes to pass—
will today’s truths not hollow
like the skull, dissolve to dust,
while the suppressed word,
once slain by death,
breaks forth in light again?
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