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Hamlet

BREAK AN EGG!

I am reminded of Professor Wallofski’s

Omelette, Prince of Demark, and the rotten egg

the curate ate, watching this particular

‘peasant rogue…tear a passion to tatters’

as if each word were merely a bagatelle

on a stage the size of a tennis court.

‘Oh, what a noble mind…’ But, yoking apart,

who would wander those chill corridors,

discouraged by the guttering torches

in their sconces, where duty and hatred,

love and negligence throng in the smoky

shadows only words discombobulate –

or be unsettled by the Baltic surging

at the cliffs where ambition leaps ‘Even,’

as the lad himself said, ‘for an eggshell!’

 

 

Note: The poem was first posted on the site in December 2015.

 

BREAK AN EGG!

I am reminded of Professor Wallofski’s
Omelette, Prince of Demark, and the rotten egg
the curate ate, watching this particular
‘peasant rogue…tear a passion to tatters’
as if each word were merely a bagatelle
on a stage the size of a tennis court.
‘Oh, what a noble mind…’ But, yoking apart,
who would wander those chill corridors,
discouraged by the guttering torches
in their sconces, where duty and hatred,
love and negligence throng in the smoky
shadows only words discombobulate –
or be unsettled by the Baltic surging
at the cliffs where ambition leaps ‘Even,’
as the lad himself said, ‘for an eggshell!’

 

 

 

THE FALL OF SPARROWS

Commensal with humans for 10,000 years,

since the first cultivation of barley

and wheat, the house sparrow, that communal

eater of insects and seeds, is ubiquitous –

from Kolkata to Coventry, Haifa

to Hawaii – sometimes a pest, a pet

or on a plate; a symbol of lechery

or vulgarity – but in decline here

because of pesticides perhaps

or mobile phones, car parks, unleaded petrol.

 

Certainly, we miss the small flocks in the shrubs

and their rapid, ceaseless chatterings.

A lone bird appears occasionally,

silent mostly but for the odd, ‘chirrup, chirrup’.

So, as Hamlet says, ‘…we defy augury.

There’s a special providence in the fall

of a sparrow… if it be not now,

yet it will come – the readiness is all.’