I do not know from what part of the world
I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.
—IV, 5
The direct stare will get you exactly nowhere
with the supporting character. First, he’s not looking at you.
Student of archaeology,
he sifts the layers represented in the castle;
he divines the origin of each sentimental knickknack’s
placement on an occasional table, he understands
the mat and doily on the piano, the subtle geography
of Louis Seize, Queen Anne, Arabia, Delft
accumulated in various regimes, the tectonic shifts
of braces of photographs, portraits groaning on the walls—
but always he looks back to the prince, to catch the very eye
of fury and confusion, as if the shouts, the crashing into chairs,
the whispers and popping of knuckles were a language
he might learn, or at least make into sense,
given enough time and his own accomplished diligence.
Study makes the scholar a stranger to his home.
So don’t look at him. Take as read
the faithful friend, and instead look where he’s looking.
Student of astronomy,
he knows some things can be seen with the averted glance:
color lives in the center of the eye (a man slips
behind a purple curtain; a distraught girl
in draggled lace and grass stains
hovers at the hem of the audience, sighing)
but black and white thrive on the verge—
he thinks of Andromeda’s velvet
drapery, the other galaxy
that hides behind her skirts, that only appears,
like a flaw in a lens, when you look askew.
Safer that way.
Look at Horatio, and you’ll see his friend the prince.
But stare at the prince, and you’ll see his galaxy’s
peculiar movement around him,
its starts and jags, beyond the power
of a friend’s equations, anyway, to describe.
Student of literature,
he knows the poet’s trick of examining
the sagging porch in lieu of the fight with the wife,
the bauble to talk about beauty, all the old dodges and feints.
He himself is not a metaphor;
he can’t say what he came here for.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
