The Night Robert Burns Skull Went For A Walk

The moon that night 
escaped the pages of Macbeth 
to nestle in the margin of a sky 
where birds drummed instead of sang
& the kirkyard clock summoned midnight 
                                                       with a holy gong.
A phrenologist, spiritualist, Victorian scientist, 
surgeon & two workmen swaddled together 
to exhume the body of Robert Burns
& raise him from the long dead.
A dank black stone 
         of the muddy underworld 
         coughed out his skeleton
as the lantern wobbled & ladder shook.
In one fell swoop, they dismembered his head,
        40-years after his death 
        all that was left was dust 
where flesh once slept & accepted kisses,
the heart dissolved & gone living on elsewhere 
like Bruce whose silver-wrapped aortic chambers
were tossed into the melee of battle immortalised.
        The heroic spleen and eyeball bereft 
         no gore like before 
each organ a delicacy of fat for the worm's sword,
        just rot & parched bones now 
        aching to be used as weapons.
From the pauper's grave to the mausoleum 
with pillars & marble figures erected at The Plough
        his wife now buried too, 
        people still unable to forget him, 
the bard could hardly be left in peace;
violent admiration is akin to love after all. 
They fumbled away from tomb 
          towards the plasterers' shop 
          on Queensberry street 
swinging the skull in a linen sack,
the light carrying the creak of the casket, 
           a fondled mandible.
Each man tried their hat on the thing in turn
like the glass‐ossified fairytale slipper 
           who will be the fairest fit 
on this enlarged occipital lobe which shows 
his love for animals & children 
           said the phrenologist 
& the scientist kept the Paris cast 
           for behind glass
of an always lit university corridor,  
& the spiritualist held a séance & spoke in tongues,
& the plasterer waved, heaved & whistled,
& the workmen shared a cheese & apple sandwich.
But Burns hollow orbital sockets
          were as fierce as Fingal's Cave
watching back in amusement, 
his spine patiently waiting 
through the nocturne 
humming a tune 
for its reunion.