Shakespeare: a Reconstruction
from Matthew Arnold, ‘Shakespeare’
Others are open. You give a high smile
as you win the Prospero stakes, and silently
bury your books deeper than any auditor
could find them sound or unsound.
Did you ‘die a papist’, hate dogs, love swarthy
ironhaired women and fair flibbertigibbet men
or are the sonnets a load of. Cigarette foil
litters our searching and poring. You sit there
self-sustaining, a white cloud, while your wife
sews your new coat-of-arms passim. Better sew
than unpick! See Marlowe? Well.
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
all weakness that impairs, all griefs that faze
rebels like him, you filched to salt your plays.
from Themes on a Variation (Carcanet Press, 1988)
