Love and Loss

     I have been reading a rather excellent book about William Shakespeare by Michael Wood, published in 2003. I am a little over halfway through its 300 pages; many of the which have pictures, maps, and art that further flesh out the life, background, and times and possible motivations and thoughts of the Bard, as he is known to the world. Quite the influential artist and thinker, this Bard, or maybe balladeer; many mysteries and conjecture abound: much must be guessed at by context clues and other otherwise considered detritus of the past; letters and pocket litter and wills and land deeds and paintings held within family histories...

    So much rides on the knowledge of this poet and creator of the modern world; he has formulated plays and poems that perpetually resonate and reverberate within our minds and hearts, this far into the 21st century. He was part and parcel of the emerging greatness of England; perhaps in a symbiotic way his methods and messages of entertainment rode the vehicles and prowess of British supremacy around the world.

Herein is my attempt at a paean, somewhat of a tribute, or shout out this man, poet, balladeer, legend.

What is a Sonnet?

 

A sonnet, some might say, is a prescribed notation,

 

A formalized summation,

 

Capturing our imagination,

 

And, conjuring some frustration.

 

 

It can take a while to understand.

 

If at all.

 

It leaves us with oft quoted ill portended speculation.

 

Rhymes and incantations, as par for the course.

 

Summoning the witches, the wizards, the farthest reaches

of our collective innermost ruminations.

The ghosts, the goblins, the fairies, the spirits:

All alive in the Hallowed Eves of our cerebral machinations.

 

Shakespeare awakes the blood and lusts of leaders past and present,

A young anti-hero named Hamlet, 

A middle aged tyrant called Caesar,

Star crossed lovers, I need not name here,

Kings and right hand men, wives and jealous lovers,

The Puckish ones and Rufios,

The queer Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are not dead,

Ever.

Not with the Bard.

They live eternally with us,

In the dead Yalie Harold Bloom and the rest,

High and small.

They live on even in my poor unbalanced words.

Dream on, star crossed lovers, raving mad despots!

 

Dysfunctional pairs of men and women, uncles and nephews,

 

Sages and mages,

 

Battlers and thieves

 

 

Evoking the winds and the chimes,

 

The jokes and the twins,

 

The monsters and armies,

 

The dreams and the seas.

 

Endlessly, into the dark, vast night.

 

 

Full of sound and fury, signifying:

 

Everything.

 

 

This is no sonnet, 

 

No sir,

 

I do not know if I am iambic nor pentameter,

 

Rhyming or reasoning.

 

 

I simply know that I am, and alas,

 

I knew it not so well.

 

Nor poetry nor prose,

 

Nay, not even a rose, 

 

Which would smell so sweet.

 

 

A popcorn ball, 

 

laying at my feet.

 

 

Play on, stage hands and directors,

 

For us, the performers and portrayers,

 

Are we. 

We are they and they are us, and I am me, and you are not me,

And, and, and, and ...

Thus we shall be.

Nor sonnet nor laurel, nor much ado about anything in particular.