Strata: Archaeologist’s Love Song

I love to play
Where there’s decay.
My thorax yearns
For ashy urns.
I need the tomb
More than the womb.
I’m most at home
In a catacomb.

Relics of an early race
Bring a smile upon my face.
Bones of a Roman
Shake my abdomen.
Skulls of Egyptians
Give me conniptions.
I think a mausoleum
Is a screum.

—Jean Sulzberger

Jean Sulzberger is the editor of Search Journey on the Inner Path (Harper & Row, 1979) and great-aunt of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the current chairman of The New York Times Company and publisher of The New York Times