Mount me not on squalid streets,
A monument of stone and praise,
Where the crows find perch and
Stranger’s gaze,
Upon copper or bronze,
Not human, this.
Burn me not for chastisement,
To bathe my ashes to holy thirst,
Upon the banks of the great river released,
In fluid time, to be carried in.
Pat me not into the earth’s midst,
Where insects crawl on unworthy decay,
Mocking and dismissive,
As below the stone I lay.
The eyes that see, that saw, that said,
Will belong as immortal, somewhere else,
Living forever, remnant,
In cursed lightlessness, blind, never again.
Make me relic of the school,
On medicine’s table, proudly spread,
As they cut and peel not on death,
--On everything that I have left.
Study and marvel how they worked,
How pure was that, the blood that flowed,
The heart that skipped and how it roared,
To youthful fancy, see me as more.
Hold me in awe, as you work,
As you learn from thought, intellect earned,
As aged doctor, you one day become,
Thank the soulful cadaver.
So enrobe me in this, not in sadness,
When cherubic skin the time has aged,
Talking of stories, those my own,
Humbled in life of gallant endeavors.
