From a poem a day project I did in 2011. A response to a visual work of performing arts. A kind of Ekphrasis.
Micah Watterson is a former student of theater at Northampton High School, where he was active playing numerous roles in my early days as a theatre teacher on the Eastern Shore. Ambitious, eager and thoughtful, he has done numerous Shakespeare roles since playing Romeo in my NEA funded grant project that turned Romeo and Juliet into a rock musical for teens. (As Romeo, the first we see of him is a busker strumming “No Woman. No Cry."—Juliet, played by Raven Bonniwell, sang “Walking After Midnight")
His one man show Roughly Hamlet inspired this:
when skull and humor combine
then the divine shall bless our lips
and seal our embrace and offer kisses
to small nations who still believe.
When spine and heart divine
a way through the avenues
of the broad city, spiking out like a heart attack,
the girl aloof, hiding in the back
of the theatre, the romance on stage unspooling.
The final product looks like this:
Hamlet to Ophelia
Humors combine in the divine blessing
our lips, O lovely girl of the north. When I laugh
you are knotted up inside me
and when I cry
you are a flower under a glassy lake.
There is more between us than memory.
Think of the small nations who still believe
in a way through the avenues
of our broad city,
spiking out like a heart attack, these ways
after ways,
after ways
of getting lost or in gutter trouble.
How many border crossings can I take?
To have my ear is to have the gears of my heart,
you can tune me with your throttle voice,
your working girl clatter,
your sharp teeth.
In a matter of minutes you could be gone.
You are the girl aloof, hiding in the back
of the theatre, the romance on stage unspooling.
In a matter of minutes you will be gone.
It is like that with us, too, separate in our misery.
The trouble is when we cross paths
I am never sure how to feel,
it’s as if you are already gone, out of mission,
out of mirth for love, and family, and ambition.
Notes:
The context of the speaker had to be clarified. There was obvious enlargement of the text, playing with themes and images of the play. What I remember so well from Micah’s show was the feeling of isolation of Hamlet, he was literally all alone there entire show, which made me as an audience member feel so much sympathy for Hamlet. Anyhoo, Hamlet and Ophelia’s scenes are some of my favorite moments in the play, any version, and this poem is a response to it, a translation if you will.
I tried to play Hamlet’s moods with the line breaks, allowing, I hope, for some circuitous verbal sounds to mimic the theme of deception in the play, as well as Hamlet’s “antic disposition."
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