What the skeleton said

Poem by Rosemary Mathew

When alive I was male. My hips have
Told you this. A warrior, a soldier.
You need only see my shin, dented,
Axe-marked, the whole leg mis-shapen
While still in my teens.

Fighting was harsh, and weapons primitive.
My hands, when they held blood, damaged by war,
My skin burned, briefly, in fire; the flesh
Scarred in accident. No modern skills
However will disclose that.

But here, today, I’m dead four thousand years,
And yet you learn from me. Guessing I lived
A good life in those times, grew to be old
As calculated then.

You know where I was born, the River Rhine.
Can tell my diet, cereals and fish –
(Quite healthy really), no sugar then
Decayed my teeth, it’s grit that wore them down
In the coarse flour from which we made our bread.

My hair was auburn, though as you can see,
None of it now remains upon my head,
Merely a skull; whose measurements and weight
Will indicate the volume of my brain.

Of course you know my height –
Thigh bone and tibia will measure that.
Yes, I was taller than the average man,
Perhaps one metre sixty (most were less) –
And weathered too, through living out of doors.

I lasted quite a while, but you won’t meet
My children, nor my wife, they’re far away.
Yes, I was over thirty when I died, an old man
For those times.
                And now of course you can
Trace my millennia of progeny from DNA
You might yourself be of my family –
Imagine that – we two could be related!

Yet no tongue utters words from my wide mouth,
This silent mouth.
Eye sockets yield no light,
And eye balls share no sight.
These ears no sounds contain.
Nor does this heart feel pain.

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