A few years after the execution,
when it had completed its time as a corpse
and had transformed into moisture and rot,

the matter that had once composed the body
of Anicius Malius Severinus Boethius
was shoveled into a wheelbarrow
and moved to the crypt of a church. At least

this was true of the skeleton, while
probably the eyes
the soldiers squeezed from the head
had already deteriorated—along with the brain
that leaked out when they bludgeoned the body to death.

Take unity away from a thing and existence too
ceases, that brain
had once thought. And in the moment
it transmitted this thought to the muscles in the hand,

it must have believed it would go on living, just as
all of us believe we will go on living
when we say I will die but really mean
here I am, thinking. And silently,

it commanded its hand to transcribe those words
while the soldiers sat outside its cell,
playing cards and throwing
knuckles of animal bone down the long Roman table.