You may be Saturday’s child all–grown
moving with a pinch of grace
You may be a clown in the burying ground
or just another pretty face…
– Robert Hunter, “Althea”

You find my skull
with its crooked little smile
and just as you heard them
in airless corridors
and quieted galleries
the clocking footfalls
above an ornery shore
resound a while.

Who works harder, the digger
or the dug? Whose sign scores
the chosen tombs but the fool
with the wisecracked mug?