Darker Than Dismemberment

No candle can stay the cohorts
of human dogmas new or old,
not reason weighed nor goodness shown
would make plain such her hopes;
Hypatia now flayed with oyster shells
and reason ripped as flesh and skin
from those who would see us as more.
Poor Hypatia, her virgin soul,
now stripped to jagged pieces pulled
limb from torso, again, again
limb from torso and head from whole,
until at last they burnt and mocked her toil
and stamped the embers that smoldered,
left over from the burning library
where we humans lost so much more.