immodest, yet beyond such things,
lie the ones whose speech will be
beyond the silence death yet brings
to those like them, or you or me:
cadavers, of whom now I sing.
The humble doctor, long ago,
would claw them rotting from the earth,
so that their students, too, could know
just how alike we are from birth --
but progress comes, however slow,
and now those days are cause for mirth.
For we are richer now, in death,
although these days we've longer lives,
and these cadavers die too, yet
their knowledge offered lives, and thrives,
a gift we should not soon forget --
the doctors, trained, for whom they strive.