At the Trial of Hamlet, Chicago, 1994
By Sherman Alexie
Did Hamlet mean to kill Polonius? Diane and I sit at a table
with the rich, who have the luxury to discuss such things
over a veal dinner. The vegetables are beautiful! I am here
because I wrote a book which nobody here has read, a book
that Diane reads because she loves me. My book has nothing
to do with Hamlet. My book is filled with reservation Indians.
Maybe my book has everything to do with Hamlet. The millionaire
next to me sets down one of his many forks to shake my hand.
He tells me the poor need the rich more than the rich need the poor.
Abigail Van Buren eats corn at the next table. I read this morning
she has always believed homosexuality is genetic. Finally. Dear Abby
can have all the corn she wants! I'll pay. She wears a polka dot dress
and is laughing loudly at something I know is not funny.
Did Hamlet really see his father's ghost? Was there a ghost? Was
Hamlet insane or merely angry when he thrust his sword through
that curtain and killed Polonius? The millionaire tells me
taxi cab drivers, shoeshine men, waiters, and waitresses exist
only because the rich, wearing shiny shoes, often need to be driven
to nice restaurants. A character actor walks by with a glass of wine.
I recognize him because I'm the type of guy who always recognizes
character actors. He knows that I recognize him but I cannot tell
if he wants me to recognize him. Perhaps he is afraid that I am
confusing him with another character actor who is more or less
famous. He might be worried that I will shout his name incorrectly
and loudly, transposing first and last names, randomly inserting
wild syllables that have nothing to do with his name. Did Hamlet
want to have sex with his mother Gertrude? Was Hamlet mad with jealousy
because Claudius got to have sex with Gertrude? When is a king
more than a king? When is a king less than a king? Diane is gorgeous.
She wears red lipstick which contrasts nicely with her brown skin.
We are the only Indians in Chicago! No, we are the only Indians
at the Trial of Hamlet. I hold her hand under the table, holding it
tightly until, of course, we have to separate so we can eat our food.
We need two hands to cut our veal. Yet, Diane will not eat veal.
She only eats the beautiful vegetables. I eat the veal and feel guilty.
The millionaire tells me the rich would love a flat tax rate. He talks
about interest rates and capital gains, loss on investments
and trickle-down economics. He thinks he is smarter than me. He is
probably smarter than me, so I insecurely tell him I wrote a book
which I know he will never read, a book that has nothing to do
with Polonius. My book is filled with reservation Indians. Maybe
it has everything to do with Polonius. A Supreme Court justice
sits at the head table. He decides my life! He eats rapidly. I want
to know how he feels about treaty rights. I want to know if he feels
guilty about eating the veal. There is no doubt in my mind
the Supreme Court justice recognizes the beauty of our vegetables.
Was Hamlet a man without logical alternatives? Did he resort
to a mindless, senseless violence? Were his actions those of a tired
and hateful man? Or those of a righteous son? The millionaire introduces
his wife, but she barely acknowledges our presence. Diane is more
gorgeous, even though she grew up on reservations and once
sat in a tree for hours, wishing she had lighter skin. Diane wears
a scarf she bought for three dollars. I would ask her to marry me right
now, again, in this city where I asked her to marry me for the first time.
But she already agreed to marry me then and has, in fact, married me.
Marriage causes us to do crazy things. She reads my books. I eat veal.
Was Hamlet guilty or not by reason of insanity for the murder of Polonius?
The millionaire tells me how happy he is to meet me. He wishes me
luck. He wants to know what I think of Hamlet's case. He tells me Hamlet
is responsible for what he did, insane or not. There is always something
beautiful in the world at any given moment. When I was poor I loved
the five dollar bills I would unexpectedly find in coat pockets. When I feel
tired now, it can be the moon hanging over the old hotels of Chicago.
Diane and I walk out into the cold November air. We hail a taxi.
The driver is friendly, asks for our names, and Diane says, I'm Hamlet
and this is Hamlet, my husband. The driver wants to know where
we're from and which way we want to go. Home, we say, home.
FATHER AND SON
Now in the suburbs and the falling light
I followed him, and now down sandy road
Whiter than bone-dust, through the sweet
Curdle of fields, where the plums
Dropped with their load of ripeness, one by one.
Mile after mile I followed, with skimming feet,
After the secret master of my blood,
Him, steeped in the odor of ponds, whose indomitable love
Kept me in chains. Strode years; stretched into bird;
Raced through the sleeping country where I was young,
The silence unrolling before me as I came,
The night nailed like an orange to my brow.
How should I tell him my fable and the fears,
How bridge the chasm in a casual tone,
Saying, “The house, the stucco one you built,
We lost. Sister married and went from home,
And nothing comes back, it’s strange, from where she goes.
I lived on a hill that had too many rooms;
Light we could make, but not enough of warmth,
And when the light failed, I climbed under the hill.
The papers are delivered every day;
I am alone and never shed a tear.”
At the water’s edge, where the smothering ferns lifted
Their arms, “Father!” I cried, “Return! You know
The way. I’ll wipe the mudstains from your clothes;
No trace, I promise, will remain. Instruct
Your son, whirling between two wars,
In the Gemara of your gentleness,
For I would be a child to those who mourn
And brother to the foundlings of the field
And friend of innocence and all bright eyes.
0 teach me how to work and keep me kind.”
Among the turtles and the lilies he turned to me
The white ignorant hollow of his face.
–Stanley Kunitz
King Claudius
By C.P. Cavafy
My mind now moves to distant places.
I’m walking the streets of Elsinore,
through its squares, and I recall
the very sad story
of that unfortunate king
killed by his nephew
because of some fanciful suspicions.
In all the homes of the poor
he was mourned secretly
(they feared Fortinbras).
He was a quiet, gentle man,
a man who loved peace
(his country had suffered much
from the wars of his predecessor),
he behaved graciously toward everyone,
humble and great alike.
Never high-handed, he always sought advice
in the kingdom’s affairs
from serious, experienced people.
Just why his nephew killed him
was never precisely explained.
The prince suspected him of murder,
and the basis of his suspicion was this:
walking one night along an ancient battlement
he thought he saw a ghost
and he had a conversation with this ghost;
what he supposedly heard from the ghost
were certain accusations against the king.
It must have been a fit of fancy,
an optical illusion,
(the prince was highly strung in the extreme;
while he was studying at Wittenberg,
many of his fellow students thought him a maniac).
A few days later he went
to his mother’s room to discuss
certain family affairs. And suddenly,
while he was talking, he lost his self-control,
started shouting, screaming
that the ghost was there in front of him.
But his mother saw nothing at all.
And that same day, for no apparent reason,
he killed an old gentleman of the court.
Since the prince was due to sail for England
in a day or two,
the king hustled him off posthaste
in order to save him.
But the people were so outraged
by the monstrous murder
that rebels rose up
and tried to storm the palace gates,
led by the dead man’s son,
the noble lord Laertes
(a brave young man, also ambitious;
in the confusion, some of his friends called out:
“Long live King Laertes!”).
Later, once the kingdom had calmed down
and the king was lying in his grave,
killed by his nephew (the prince,
who never went to England
but escaped from the ship on his way there),
a certain Horatio came forward
and tried to exonerate the prince
by telling some stories of his own.
He said that the voyage to England
had been a secret plot, and orders
had been given to kill the prince there
(but this was never clearly ascertained).
He also spoke of poisoned wine,
wine poisoned by the king.
It’s true that Laertes spoke of this too.
But couldn’t he have been lying?
Couldn’t he have been mistaken?
And when did he say all this?
While dying of his wounds, his mind reeling,
his talk seemingly babble.
As for the poisoned weapons,
it was shown later that the poisoning
hadn’t been done by the king at all:
Laertes had done it by himself.
But Horatio, whenever pressed,
would produce even the ghost as a witness:
the ghost said this and that,
the ghost did this and that!
Because of all this, though hearing Horatio out,
most people in all conscience
pitied the good king,
who, with all these ghosts and fairy tales,
was unjustly killed and disposed of.
Yet Fortinbras, who profited from it all
and gained the throne so easily,
gave full attention and great weight
to every word Horatio said.
Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard
(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.
Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)
HE LUGS THE GUTS INTO THE OTHER ROOM
Hamlet, Act III, Scene iv
Time was a son would pay a father’s debts,
keep close to ease a father’s dying,
have sons himself to teach and understand
how to let go without regret
of everyone we love, one at a time
or all at once, that mystery.
This is another time, so little mystery
I am a son who hasn’t honored my debt
to your sacrifice, all your lost time.
I lived so you could start your dying
and here’s the usual regret,
a lack of touch or talk enough to understand.
Your rage and absences I tried to understand,
your weakness seemed a mystery,
the early marriage and the late regret.
The job you hated but it paid the debts
paid weekly for your daily dying.
You spent yourself in time.
Early to an empty bed to rise on time
you woke to sunless rooms. I understand
the crush of sequence now, how months go dying
into years, the lack of mystery.
How the future’s looming unengendered debts
infect the past with a cancerous regret.
The past is over, we go beyond regret
to put each other at ease. It’s time
to honor you through honor pays no debts
as doesn’t praise you wouldn’t understand.
Why we did what we did remains a mystery
unsolved by either of our dyings.
I wasn’t there to ease you in your dying.
We die alone and that we all regret,
pass from mystery unto mystery,
our clockwork hearts on borrowed time
live just long enough to understand
to whom we owe and why the heavy debt.
Debts we dread to owe the most, in time
get paid without regret. Sons grow to understand
the living in the dying, the father’s mystery.
-Bruce Taylor
Elegy of Fortinbras
by Zbigniew Herbert
for C.M.
Now that we’re alone we can talk prince man to man
though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant
nothing but black sun with broken rays
I could never think of your hands without smiling
and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests
they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this
The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart
and the knight’s feet in soft slippers
You will have a soldier’s funeral without having been a soldier
the only ritual I am acquainted with a little
There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts
crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums drums I know nothing
exquisite
those will be my manoeuvers before I start to rule
one has to take the city by the neck and shake it a bit
Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life
you believed in crystal notions not in human clay
always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras
wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit
you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe
Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to
and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me
you chose the easier part of an elegant thrust
but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching
with a cold apple in one’s hand on a narrow chair
with a view of the ant-hill and the clock’s dial
Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project
and a decree on prostitutes and beggars
I must also elaborate a better system of prisons
since as you justly said Denmark is a prison
I go to my affairs This night is born
a star named Hamlet We shall never meet
what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy
It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos
and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott
"Elegy of Fortinbras" by Zbigniew Herbert from Selected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert,
Edited and Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott. English translation
copyright © 1968 by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Scott. Used by permission of
HarperCollins Publishers, www.harpercollins.com
Source: Selected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert (The Ecco Press, 1985)
Ophelia
By Arthur Rimbaud
On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...
- In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.
For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.
The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.
The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
- A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.
II
O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!
- It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.
It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;
It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!
Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!
You melted to him as snow does to a fire;
Your great visions strangled your words
- And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!
III
- And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.
- As translated by Oliver Bernard: Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962)
The Revised Versions
Even Samuel Johnson found that ending
unbearable, and for over a hundred years
Lear was allowed to live, along with Cordelia,
who marries Edgar, who tried so hard
to do the right thing. It's not easy
being a king, having to worry every day
about the ambitions of your friends.
Who needs a bigger castle?
Let's sleep on it, Macbeth might tell his wife,
wait and see what comes along.
So Antony keeps his temper, takes Cleopatra
aside to say: We need to talk this through.
And Hamlet? Send him back to school to learn
no one ever really pleases his father.
And while he's reading he'll remember
how pretty Ophelia was, how much
she admired his poems.
Why not make what you can of love?
It's what we want for ourselves,
wary of starting a fight, anxious
to avoid another scene, having suffered
through too many funerals and heard
how eloquently the dead are praised
who threw their lives away.
--Lawrence Raab
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