I claw at the fringes of life

as the shadow of Ophelia.

The spoilt daughter of Polonius

may have gone insane

but she will never reach the depth

of what my charming existence

has become, the strangled hole

of fantasy, the bitterly guarded memories

she shed as she slips into the water,

Hamlet bound to the end,

in the murky river, knotweed, unheard,

fast flowing thoughts of increasing vanity…

 

She left me by the shoreline in despair

as she lay still and her heavy

heart sunk without a trace, dying

there in the sunshine,

her final thought for her Prince

of Danish fools and the realisation

that she truly was mad…

 

She left me by the abandoned shoreline,

a discarded adventurer now surplus

to requirements,

the virginal whore’s unrestricted love,

once bound for the naughty nights

in the nunnery, all whimples and praying

on the knees, hardship and God,

now floating in the slipstream, facedown

and mouthing oh dear Hamlet,

you drove me mad, whilst

as the now unemployed shadow,

I get no reward, no love for Hamlet I,

I will just sit here in the shadows,

the shadow in the dusk,

and forever outline Ophelia’s

raging words.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016