Lorraine Boyce

Honouring the Ancient Dead

We are the ancestors who lie so still,
In ice, in peat preserved, now under glass.
But as you all stand here and gaze your fill,
Must we stay silent now and let you pass?
We know you rate us high in your own way.
With microscopes and knives our secrets probe,
Taking our guts’ contents, our DNA.
You measure us from toenail to brain’s lobe.
But may we not sink back once more to earth?
Our remains might lie so quiet now, at rest,
As mother-wrapt a child so soft at birth.
May we go now, is that perhaps the best?
Though much or little of us is here to see,
You must admit remains’ humanity.

Lorraine Boyce