~ after "The Funeral of Shelley," Louis Edouard Fournier; 1889
Soft tissue, mostly.
Hair, skin, nails, muscles,
organs. All the water of the body
turns to vapor. Some parts of teeth
survive the heat, though gums liquefy
as pulp. Bone fragments can also survive;
and the jaw, the skull. In Fournier's
picture, Mary Shelley kneels in the sand,
hands crossed over her breast. Byron,
Trelawney and Hunt argue over the charred
bit of muscle that surprisingly survives
the fire— but Mary gets to keep what was
believed to be her poet-husband's calcified
heart, after he drowned and was cremated
on a beach in Viareggio. She wrapped it in
a bit of silk or linen and some pages of
his poetry. It lay in her drawer until
its discovery after her death.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
