The Case of the Heslington Brain

A sealed clay pit
devoid of oxygen,
a skull face down
cut from the torso after death;
jaw bones,
two vertebrae attached.

Lying loose inside:
a quantity of bright yellow
spongy stuff.

Who was he,
buried in wet, clay-rich ground
over two millennia ago?

What did he suffer?
Why was he killed?
What did he know?

His preserved brain,
silent as his jaws,
speaks to nobody.
There is no body.

Nobody can ever know
how he lived or died but only where,
as mud was his witness.