Shakespeare, yesterday

            Slowly Waking Down

At dawn, three hundred ninety-nine years ago,

Old William may have woken to the notion

that fifty-two years had passed for him to tailor gloves.

After all, the hand requires comfort to acclaim

all that makes us paragon of animals, more than moles,

actors who will strut and fret, wringing, rubbing

blood and sweat from deeds we’ve done,

kissing where the palms of pilgrims touched,

twenty years ago on stage, then privately,

as lone Mirandas float away, back to mainland

happenstance, Stratford, on & on.

At breakfast, every third thought be my grave,

Old William may have rearranged the rhyme

that beats iambically—less in breast than mind.

The epitaph is scarcely worth a second draft:

it satisfies no tourist well, belies a noble voice that has

to pass through beggar’s guts by worms who hardly

have a final word, because the rest… (the

undiscovered country, shipwrecks ending comically,

gender flips and sly bed tricks and due decree

from dukes beyond their relevance, midsummer

dreams at night and day) is silence.

At noon, let’s not contend the findings of our Fool,

who at his own behest declared a need to go to bed.

The day remains to figure out the rest (is silence—

kingdom for a horse, to gallop into… not exactly

my remorse, for how could any stooge expect

an insight more)?  He scrapes for lines to honor

smilings of a creed. Four hundred years from now—

twice what Chekhov challenges (God bless his

ill-at-ease)—the world needs more than Arden trees:

letters toward love’s labour’s lost defy reality, but,

fools we are, we scribble as we read.

  

At tea-time, little else is on our mind. A game

of chess? A suitable pastime. The squares are there

to keep the conflict straight: thousands will calibrate

the wherewithal by which a pawn may, hook-

and-crook, become a queen, as Hal (in cowl) allowed

before St Crispin’s victory. “Don’t surround

yourself with yourself”—wisdom from the spheres.

The bard, at seventh stage, is sans himself by now,

no need to howl, howl, as idiots avow;…

I’ll take the gardener, good Kent and Desdemona to

the very brink, blissfully there to fall.