Shakespeare
CLEOPATRA
The lover of famed men, she's on her third,
Mark Antony, once hard, now soft and tame;
he fears he'll never rise again - his name
has been impeached. Her lips, arms, bed and words
are ready to restore him, "smiling from
the world's great snare uncaught." He's won one fight,
calls for more wine, an Alexandrian night.
His fate lies unexploded, a firebomb
will raze his everything and she'll betray
him to the end. Was it a world well lost?
As he spends, dying, they assess the cost
and smaller men work out how much to pay.
She valued what she gave him, but did he
think, as he ate, that anything came free?
HORATIO
"These are but wild and whirling words" - his friend
is half-mad, staring, rants of secrecy:
such moods must be contained, such speech offends
his daylight caution, his philosophy.
The horrors of a nightmare touch his mind
and rock it for an hour, till dawn; then he
looks at his hands and knows he is not blind.
This man is rare, this sceptic, questioner,
the man who counts the seconds, sees behind
the mask of chance - and yet he's everywhere.
(You'll find him in forgotten friends, the ones
you've written off as yesterday's voyeurs.)
Upstaged, he watches once the play's begun,
he gives the sane man's balanced point of view
as wild and whirling things are said - and done.
But, prince in judgement, Hamlet takes his cue
(sometimes) from him, the one who sees it through.
Last Act of Hamlet
A sparrow falls but no-one hears the sound
as those dun feathers meet the crumbling soil.
Can its soft death, unnoticed, feed the ground
and cause another from a poisoned foil?
The happening is now: what is to come
requires a reader to decode the text -
and funeral marchers, ready with their drum.
must wait till one find leads on to the next.
We're like Horatio, the constant friend,
outside the main plot, never truly heard
"Say you are not fit," we plead: the end
beats in our ears, the echo from one bird.
If we leave that small corpse alone and look
the other way, can we rewite the book?
(First published on 14x14)
To return to the Home Page click here
CLEOPATRA
The lover of famed men, she's on her third,
Mark Antony, once hard, now soft and tame;
he fears he'll never rise again - his name
has been impeached. Her lips, arms, bed and words
are ready to restore him, "smiling from
the world's great snare uncaught." He's won one fight,
calls for more wine, an Alexandrian night.
His fate lies unexploded, a firebomb
will raze his everything and she'll betray
him to the end. Was it a world well lost?
As he spends, dying, they assess the cost
and smaller men work out how much to pay.
She valued what she gave him, but did he
think, as he ate, that anything came free?
HORATIO
"These are but wild and whirling words" - his friend
is half-mad, staring, rants of secrecy:
such moods must be contained, such speech offends
his daylight caution, his philosophy.
The horrors of a nightmare touch his mind
and rock it for an hour, till dawn; then he
looks at his hands and knows he is not blind.
This man is rare, this sceptic, questioner,
the man who counts the seconds, sees behind
the mask of chance - and yet he's everywhere.
(You'll find him in forgotten friends, the ones
you've written off as yesterday's voyeurs.)
Upstaged, he watches once the play's begun,
he gives the sane man's balanced point of view
as wild and whirling things are said - and done.
But, prince in judgement, Hamlet takes his cue
(sometimes) from him, the one who sees it through.
Last Act of Hamlet
A sparrow falls but no-one hears the sound
as those dun feathers meet the crumbling soil.
Can its soft death, unnoticed, feed the ground
and cause another from a poisoned foil?
The happening is now: what is to come
requires a reader to decode the text -
and funeral marchers, ready with their drum.
must wait till one find leads on to the next.
We're like Horatio, the constant friend,
outside the main plot, never truly heard
"Say you are not fit," we plead: the end
beats in our ears, the echo from one bird.
If we leave that small corpse alone and look
the other way, can we rewite the book?
(First published on 14x14)
To return to the Home Page click here
