Archive 04/20/09 - (2)

   

Brodsky Meets Bolingbroke

                                                                  

The "overflow of good converts to bad,"

Says Bolingbroke, in Shakespeare's King Richard II.

Could it be that he knew more about self-righteousness,

 

The treacherous depths of hubris,

The malevolence done in the name of benevolence,

Than I could ever hope to,

 

I just one rough sand granule in the Bard of Avon's hourglass,

A half-assed poet going about his business

Of composing free-verse lyrics redolent of man's corruption?

 

How can I begin to answer you, my melancholy spirit,

That, of course, he did, would have,

Being initiated into evil's fraternity, four centuries before I was born?

 

But don't perturb yourself, anima mea. I'm on a fast track,

Making up for lost time, learning humankind's cruelest secrets,

Beginning to look through Paul's dark glass, Ahab's mask.

 

Give me another score of wisdom's later years,

And I, too, just might scribe my own damned Hamlet,

My own blood-drenched Macbeth, my own devious King Richard II.

 

But if not, trust me, anyway, my soul's messenger,

That I'll leave behind a massive oeuvre of personal indignation,

Raging against hypocrisy, hatred, rapaciousness, and murder,

 

Undergirded with compassion, kindness, and love —

The caritas and tikkun olam that Jesus the Jew evoked,

Even as He shouldered His yoke, over Via Dolorosa's stones.

 

 

 

 

 

                

04/20/09 - (2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 
   
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