from Lessons from the Life Class.

Marcus.

A doctor's widow rang the school:
Could we make use of his old skeleton?
Perhaps we could collect? (His name

is Marcus, by the way.) Fog had
gripped the common, stopping all the buses.
The long box rubbed against my leg,

yet all the weight of him was on
my shoulders as I felt the soberness
pall bearers must feel, humping him.

Quite suddenly, a face, as if
from a dark window looking out at me.
Good evening sir, what have we here?

His smiling features rearranged
themselves, faced by my whispered confidence.
Cold decency would not allow

his wish to look inside, not in
a public place... but in the privacy
of, say, his station (half way home

for me), that would be different.
We struggled with the box in his small car.
His sergeant took a different view.

No corpse this, constable, not what
you might call genuine remains... Look here,
his joints is wired together, see?