The jawless skull has eaten the apples,
not the pears. Life is stiller this way.
St. Francis cradles the skull upside-
down in his palms. He drinks blood,
not wine, from the skull's open stem,
thinking it might have been Christ's
or Apollo's. A rope is knotted where
a neck used to breathe, dispossessing
the skull marrow. His cloak's shining
sooty-blue in cave light. Somewhere
else, wherever the jaw sought asylum,
the skull is clapping its skull hands
until they bleed: echoing cave light.
It's a skull, and it don't give a damn.