O Skulls

Perplexed Souls

O skulls!

Come, and speak to me!

Tell me, O mighty heads, of your world and of the present truths it holds.

And inform me of your capital — the capital of eternal silence, of everlasting stillness.
There in the depths where you repose, in a fathomless sea of engulfing darkness.
Those far-sunken tunnels of unfathomable floor!
Where your long journey came to rest, in those abodes!

And in your safe place
you are content, well satisfied
that you have cast off
the base human garment!..
and come to be far from everything
that has any tie to the sons of Adam,

and from all the petty things of this mean life, and its base demands, that they harbor in their breasts.
What a strange mixture you are, O hard, hard skulls!
In you is the king, master of crown and scepter,
and in you the commander of lofty rank and standing,
and the chieftain of might and authority and vigor,
and the wealthy man of means who lived in his world in safety and ease,
and then the wretched pauper whom all men met with contempt and disdain.
Death, O skulls, has shattered your earthly pride and rubbed your nose in the dust, and then smeared it with soot.
So your heads — the crowns of your glory,
the emblem of your majesty and your power —
have become a plaything tossed about by the feet of toiling time.
They are nothing but the last remains of every one whom this perishing world shelters, who goes out from the world of the skulls murmuring in the depths of his perplexed soul, saying:
— Mercy, my Lord!.. To our material bodies the hand of the fates will reach out and shatter them; then the fingers of time will work upon them and alter their features and make of them a despised mockery.