The Hamlet Poems

As regular visitors to Shakespeare ZA will know, on this platform we publish Shakespearean news, reviews, interviews, features, educational resources, digital texts, film material, conference announcements and more.

Every now and then, we also have the opportunity to share with our readers poetry that responds to, or is inspired by, Shakespeare’s plays. This poetic sequence was penned by South African author, academic and arts critic ROBERT GREIG. The poems first appeared in his 2005 collection, Rule of Cadence (UKZN Press, 2005).


THE HAMLET POEMS

AFTER THE BARBARIANS

 

And now, what will become of us without barbarians?

They were a kind of solution.

(“Waiting for the Barbarians” by CP Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalven)

 

It seems now

the Norwegians are not barbarians.

They laugh a lot,

are fond of dancing,

of vibrant colours:

unlike us, the Norwegians

are an earthy people

with a sense of community,

of family.

 

For so long

they waited for what was theirs.

Now they are here

they inspect our streets,

admire our shops, our houses –

such things dazzle the Norwegians –

they pick up delicate ornaments

with spatulate fingers, even

master our vowels.

 

And we – the wise at least –

believe we should follow their steps,

praise their rhythm, their harmonies.

 

We resolve to take fruit

to the old in their homes

twice a month, weather permitting,

to not shout at our children,

to learn how to drum.

 

Our new rulers have taught us

to celebrate Life.

 

As for those allegedly missing

and rumours of screams from cellars

it is true

we were far more discreet.

The Norwegians will learn, too, from us.

 

If we dress like them,

shout their slogans, adopt their dancing,

there will soon be no Norwegians

and none of us, just one nation

world without end.


THE NORWEGIAN PLOT

 

If you believe in gods and ghosts;

if you hope for a calm afterlife

and expect to die

soothed by the susurrus of sea

at castle walls

asleep in an orchard

breathing appleblossom;

if you believe in remaking the world

and happy endings

you're for us.

 

All it took

was an actor in old-time armour

mooing by moonlight;

a wicked stepfather;

an intellectual

seduced by action;

a prince who believed in happy endings:

theatre.


OPHELIA

 

Love was all that mattered:

lemony days in willow light,

the quaint cemetery toured

by moonlight and talk –

so much talk – of relationships.

Love, prayer and obedience would do,

and later, children.

 

Though it might take years,

the exemplary private life

would redeem the body politic.

 

The way, perhaps, a pill

quiets the turbulent mind or

more to the point, the rope

judiciously used

will still a midnight street.


OSRIC

 

Now he bears swords,

a serviceable man

found near the powerful,

smelling blood.

 

Before, life was pretty boys studying drama,

posters of Nureyev in the bathroom,

first nights at the Coward revival

(a moue for Fugard).

 

When everything was black and white

one could always invent,

ornament.

 

Now it's time to be relevant –

wearing dark clothes,

applauding the style

of an AK-47.


THE TESTAMENT OF POLONIUS

 

I ordered the castle walls

to be shrouded.

The climate was cruel.

Cells sweated silver and green.

You could smell

the waves trying to enter.

Outside, salt grained the air.

 

No edifice can last:

corrosion without, erosion within:

we try to preserve what we can,

to comfort, to muffle echoes.

 

My job was to mirror: smile

when they smiled, to cleave a brow

if they frowned, making no fuss,

to transmit intelligence, scrupulous

in using the passive tense.

 

I secured what was theirs.

Power, I learned, is doing nothing,

is lost when used.

They will use it, they will lose it.


THE SUPPORTERS OF CLAUDIUS

 

No-one ever actually voted for Claudius.

In the bad times

We were dissidents all

protecting the flame of freedom

from others. We were such secret rebels

no-one knew, not even Claudius.

 

Even the secret police –

they were really working from within

to destroy the system. To maintain their cover

they drowned the odd prisoner

taught others to leap and fly from battlements,

but these were criminals

and rapists, not to be missed.

Others, mainly the little men, took orders

Had little sense of the larger picture.

They cheer parades,

Agree with the politicians:

These must have been

The bad old days.


THE MERCHANTS PETITION FORTIBRAS

 

He will not see them, having other things to do.

Instead he sends Horatio:

his task is to hear petitions

from those who now

have so much to say.

 

Horatio learns of their loyalty,

In a sermon on the virtue of trade,

And veiled pleas for concessions.

 

He has heard it before, knows them,

the faces of those who vied

for favours of Claudius, delivered

gems to Gertrude, paid

for the hunting weekend in the wild, for carousing

at fires, who secured contracts for jails,

supplying maggots for detainees in food.

 

He thanks them for offers not made

he reports to Fortinbras:

“They’re shit-scared of new taxes,

of losing their bushveld villas,

being asked to explain.

For the sake of the economy . . .

We might reassure them?”

 

But Fortinbras, planning another campaign,

says nothing, having factored in

certain yields of uncertainty.


FORTINBRAS’S NOTES FOR A THREE-HOUR SPEECH

 

Our world is all that is the case:

we have no use for illusions:

there must be no theatre. When axes

fell the cherry trees, the previously cold

will be warmed; ghosts are silent.

 

As for mummers and all their crew

they will advance teaching

cadres of ruling substructures

to deploy the appropriate lines

from our Oslo bard, Shakespeare.

 

In addressing theatre, funerals follow –

those subversive rallies of the bad old days.

Now mourning is past. We may laud

the dead and the dying as pavestones

to our glorious dawning.

 

I commend to our orators the Romantics

whose cadences lull the populace,

who knew this world was a sign

only of immanent termination.

History is marble that bloodstains can’t mar.

 

Which brings me to Hamlet, a thinker.

Our age requires waste engineers.

We may recall his devotion to sparrows,

and, not least, love of the military drum:

the rest lies and must be silenced.

 

Since it transcends troubling thought

Music must rule our land.

You should con the caper, leaping

at Sunday rallies; and I benign will be seen

with a smile and discreet foot-tapping.

 

We will invent entrancing tribal traditions

For our popular singers to use

to teach the adroit unrolling of condoms,

for corporate choirs to hymn the collective good.

Even rapists will dance – at the tug of a noose.

 

Cadence, not words, will rule and be all.


HAMLET WATCHES

 

The assignation in Wittenberg:

I waited and waited long after our time.

Enter Fortinbras, bisecting the square.

Military boots compact the snow,

Haloed by starving sparrows.

Straight from Elsinore.

 

I kept my bargain.

Late again by design, with fanfare

He scooped up the crown

Lost no blood:

Tactician, strategist, victor.

 

I gape into space

Join the stars.

All around is bustle.

So many heroes of the struggle

Cleaning blood,

Hoisting bodies,

Buffing memory,

Inventing history,

Designs for the future.

Ruling.

 

They erect a statue –

A man reading a book, disengaged

Gaze averted. The intellectual.

They rename a small town

Where you can buy curios.

 

I have become the formal language of oratory –

Providence of sparrows cast down

In the tracks of history,

Warnings about paralysis of thinking,

the madness of those who see ghosts

To chasten the sceptical,

Quell the resistive.

 

I am a play that bores

Children who’d rather play rugby.

Like the face on a coin fingered by commerce

Tossed into ocean, I blur and vanish.

 

I kept my bargain

My dying choice alighted on Fortinbras:

A man of action who waited, let others act

But did nothing:

Still amid a flurry of sparrows.

 

After ideals

Come principles

Come decisions

Come policies

Come programmes and plans

Come well-paid carpetbaggers.

 

The gusty corridors of Elsinore privatised now

commemorate heroes against Claudius

With a popular bar called Ophelia’s

Heroes bulging in suits

Carousing

 

I observe from the battlements.