Hamlet
He whispers an elegy for a murdered father, a shapeless
King, a spectre, a poetry of grief and mist and wind.
He whispers into a fugitive night, waiting to hear
A father’s voice, tethered to the damned by misty sinews.
He becomes the night, forgoes sleep, dresses in grief,
Sits in the shadows of the cold castle-stones, moonlight
Tumbling over ramparts. And now, energized by a midnight
Purpose — shackled to revenge like a bear is shackled
To a stake — he plays at the craft of madness
Like the empty hull of a ship careening on toward
A distant home. But he has no home — not Elsinore,
Where a stolen crown sits on another’s head. Where his
Mother has abandoned him for the bloated King, and he has
Poisoned love with his pretend madness. And was it a
Madness fed impulse that led him, the son of a father
Slain, to stab, not a rat, but a man, a father, and see the
Fate he tried so hard to hew be shaped by the hand of
The son of a father slain? And feel the sudden wound, a flick,
Just a quick rapier’s sting. For everyone knew
He was a dead man from Act one.
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