Dead End

My occupation was a'calling, like a tumor, it within me swelled

A path some found appalling, that I would come to know so well

A cadaverous career awaited, the filthy task I'd undertake

With a gruesome thirst for knowledge, that only the dead could slake

My studies dismissed as morbid, incurring the headmaster's scorn

My deathly imagination derided, and into the darkness borne

From clandestine forays into graveyards

To the operating theater's grisly scenes

My bloody studies dug ever deeper

Into the obscene and the unclean

For in death's sleep what dreams may come?

And in death's name, what deeds must be done

As an anatomist, a necrologist

But I'll never be an apologist

My chosen path, to carve up stiffs

A career dismissed​ ​as a dead end

A surgeon's trade, a butcher's blade

You mourn a rest to which you won't be laid

To serve my much derided trade

Your legacy will fade to a dead end

The pounding of my father's coffin-nails beat a dolorous refrain

But by staving in those caskets, a richer living could be gained

My heart beat time with the hammer-falls

I learned to pluck men from the grave

And earned the name of resurrection-man

Plying that reviled trade

For in death's sleep what dreams may come?

And in death's name, what deeds must be done

As a resurrectionist, a necrologist

But I'll never be an apologist

My chosen path, to dig up stiffs

A career dismissed as a dead end

A surgeon's trade, ​ a wooden spade

You mourn a rest to which you won't be laid

​To serve our much benighted trades

Your legacy will fade to a dead end