AN HOUR’S AFFAIR IN ~ELSE~ AND ~OR~
Poem inspired by Jessica Carmichael's adaptation of Hamlet now playing in High Park.
Jessica Carmichael’s Hamlet in High Park was lightened and enlivened by trimming the text to one long act abridged with lines incisively and insightfully paragraph—goblined from Shakespeare’s poems, songs, and other literary works.
Sensing my big chance to write something weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, I’ve decided to give it the old collage try.
N.B.: Words from Hamlet appear in bold. My words, words words in plain text.
AN HOUR’S AFFAIR IN ELSINORE
~if~/~else~
AN HOUR MORE IN ~ELSE~ AND ~OR~
But what is your affair in Elsinore
Is it forward, not permanent,
sweet, not lasting
giving more light than heat,
as ’twere with a defeated joy?
As if some impartment did desire
‘this twilight as the gateway of descent1’
belonging to an apartness
from you alone in the ours of yore
truant disposition—
your beauty unmasked to the moon,
where the peevish opposition
in your aspect distracted us
from your relief at being free.
What hour now?—
asked The Impermanent.
Well, a funny thing about the when
of what was
so hallowed,
and so gracious,
is that time
in ~Else~ and ~Or~
it always lies
in wait, not in Albion
but where gone away things go,
which is to MARIENBAD,
not right now, but one year ago.
Remember thee?
Was that some kind of joke?
Tossed off, impertinent?
Remember the brow of my true mother?
Perhaps you meant
Reprieve Me.
For how now to remember you Ricœurantly
but to relive that week of hours
—when you Gibbered on the Roman Streets,
in a fiction, in a dream of passion
that so deceived me—
that not I grieve
the loss of Oneself as Another?
Thence to a watch,
thence into a weakness
Where sadly the poor wretch comes pleading
Every single aching
desevered Ada Lovelace day
away from the moment of vision.
Perchance ’twill wtalk again
The seam much unsinewed
Nevertheless I’ll call upon you
ere the importunate, ere you go to bed
“Believe me”
[In the way that Donald Trump might say]
to nightly remind you for the first time,
what can be in a time.
And maybe now and then
with a broken voice
and all for nothing
beyond this pale irretrieve
We Remember Me.
Knowing that best safety lies in fear,
Your scourge and minister
Ron Q. Dandelion
Martin Heidegger, Language in the Poem