5/3/03
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.
--Hamlet, 5.2, 345-?349???
I
When lights dimmed
And cocks shrilled three times into echoless air,
You were the stone left standing,
Lonely sinner expiated
By the blood vow of a littered stage,
A Roman hero bereft of death
By necessity and love.
"Here I am," you said.
I asked you to stay
Like a modern-day Peter
While I followed the ghost of my father to Hell.
To this world you must hold allegiance, friend;
You could not share my cup of death -
Share me in your life instead;
Carry my name instead of my cross
Into tomorrow, another limelight
Under which to die.
II
I loved you in my way,
You narrator of my requiem,
You empty nameless love, through time
Have fallen between the lines
Humbling yourself
To carve a character of chastened beauty
You stood in waxing change and dawn
And only three times did deny me:
You, self-roughened stone on which I stand
Denied my love, yourself, and memory
By carving so small a slice of you for me
And history.
If I had loved you
Would fates have changed us
To unsung heroes of antique appeal?
By emptying myself to you
Would I cease to be my tragedy
And degrade myself to life and anonymity?
You loved me too much
To bind me to you,
Husbanding me instead to history.
III
Carve you now a statue
Polished by your holy fame
Which resides forgotten in the crevices of pages and stages
Label it your name:
Horatio
Who had a call, a love, a charge,
And answered, stone-like, "here I am."
