Listen

There is a knocking in the skull,

An endless silent shout

Of something beating on a wall,

And crying, “Let me out!”

That solitary prisoner

Will never hear reply.

No comrade in eternity

Can hear the frantic cry.

No heart can share the terror

That haunts his monstrous dark.

The light that filters through the chinks

No other eye can mark.

When flesh is linked with eager flesh,

And words run warm and full,

I think that he is loneliest then,

The captive in the skull.

Caught in a mesh of living veins,

In cell of padded bone,

He loneliest is when he pretends

That he is not alone.

We’d free the incarcerate race of man

That such a doom endures

Could only you unlock my skull,

Or I creep into yours.