a-muse
Infinitum Poetry
Welcome!
Randy Guess
Robert Frost
Maya Angelou
Walt Whitman
Carl Sandburg
W.H. Auden
Archibald MacLeish
Kahlil Gibran
Mark Twain
A.R. Ammons
Rudyard Kipling
James Beattie
John Clare
Henry Longfellow
Anne Sexton
William Wordsworth
Paiute Native American Indians
Shoshone Native American Indians



They All Want To Play Hamlet

They all want to play Hamlet.
They have not exactly seen their fathers killed
Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill,
Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart,
Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders,
Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers - O flowers,
     flowers slung by a dancing girl - in the saddest play the
     inkfish, Shakespeare, ever wrote;
Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad
     and to stand by an open grave with a joker's skull in the hand and
     then to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words
     masking a heart that's breaking, breaking,
This is something that calls and calls to their blood.
They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be
     particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet.


Carl Sandburg





[Fog]    [Monotone]

[Chicago]

[They All Want To Play Hamlet]


[Home]    [What's New]
[Short Stories]    [Philosophy]    [Forums]
[Webrings]    [Biographies]    [Site Index]    [Contact]
[Extras]    [Links]    [Copyright]


<top>

  Join Infinitum Poetry Community!  
 
 

Click Here!