I was rambling on the issue of museums and human remains and how certain populations are more likely to have their bodies put on display to be gawked at and then went “well I guess the Pompeii casts were of Europeans. there are bones in there right?” and Googled it to make sure, at which point I confirmed that yes there are bones in there, but more interestingly DNA testing revealed that a cast of an adult holding a child everyone assumed was a mother and child were, in fact, a man and a kid entirely unrelated to him. Honestly that’s more moving to me. Maybe they were connected in a way other than blood, but maybe a stranger saw a child when the world was ending and thought the one thing he could do was hold them.
Did you know them,
before the end of the world?
This little child, this crying tiny thing,
The one in your arms forever under dust
And rock and plastered bones?You share no blood but still you share a tomb,
Was this a neighbour child? One you passed
Most days and knew their name
And knew to hold them in your final moments?
Telling them “of course, we’ll find them, I know your mother’s face –“
Before the sky came thundering down?Or were you slaves together?
Abandoned at your master’s fleeing heels,
As you carried this child who never should have shared your fate,
Through perhaps the only minutes of freedom you ever knew?
Did you pray together, cry together in a language half-forgotten
As you crouched beneath the flames of Gods?Or were you strangers then –
And still –
And you saw a child, alone, afraid, and thought:
“The last thing I can do for them is clasp
them tight and shield their eyes
from these cruel, unyielding skies.”Does it matter if you knew them then?
Before the rocks, before the smoke clouds whirled
Because you held them, in that end
Before the death of all your world.
- Bodhrán M