CAN A MAN’S SKULL ROLL?

What was their story
Those twelve dead men
How could they speak
With not one tongue between them
Twelve dead men
Stripped to the bone
Can a man’s skull roll in the wind?

Twelve headless men
Half buried in sand
Stinging wind
And the wild sea crashing
Carrion for the jackal
Perch for the gull
Can a man’s skull roll in the wind?

What is a man that he dares to dream?
What is a man that he turns his back on the wind?
What is the call that it carries no prophesy?
Can a man’s skull roll in the wind?

These twelve dead men
They were found by others
Twelve skeletons
Stripped to the bone
Found by others
And the cold sea crashing
Can a man’s skull roll in the wind?

What is a man that he dares to dream?
What is a man that he turns his back on the wind?
And what is the call that it carries no prophesy?
Can a man’s skull roll in the wind?

Roll, roll in the wind
Roll, roll in the wind

CAN A MAN’S SKULL ROLL?
In 1942 the Dunedin Star, carrying 21 passengers and a crew of 85, ran aground some forty kilometres south of the Kunene mouth. The passengers, some of them women, and 42 crew members managed to reach the shore through the pounding surf before the lifeboat broke up. The rescue operation reads like a chapter of disasters and lasted for days. The people on the shore had no food or water. In the course of digging for water they unearthed twelve headless skeletons.
When I read this I couldn’t leave it alone. What on earth could have brought these twelve men to this isolated stretch of nowhere? And how did they get there? And when? And who or what on earth on this desolate strip of coast would have removed twelve skulls?
I imagined them gradually drying and becoming hollow: ideal for rolling in the wind.

  • Barbara Fairhead