Thigh-bone said to breast-bone:
“How fares it, dead,
now heart’s soft hammer
is silencèd?
How fares it, brother,
when the only sound
is slow roots thrusting
into the ground?”
Breast-bone said to thigh-bone:
“How fares it, friend,
with no errands to run,
no knee to bend?
How fares it ghost, now
the only stir
is of quiet becoming
quieter?”
Thigh-bone and breast-bone
said to skull:
“What of dead Plato
and the Greek trull?
How fares it, emblem
of death, set free
from wisdom and lust’s
infirmity?”…
—Humbert Wolfe (1885–1940), from “A Conversation,” 1932