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.