Puppet,Puppeteer

Puppet/Puppeteer

Triptych

I

A shabby, gilded box, a faded curtain
anywhere, anywhen ' the story is eternal.
It is the old stale tale of January and May
that wintry fool who fell in love with spring:
And now a slim brown hand holds forth a painted sign:
"Winter and Spring, Age and Youth ' the Comedy

II

The curtain lifts, we see the figure of a man
in his decline: grey-haired, wrinkled,
once-handsome face lined like a map of Hades.
He moves. We watch him twist and contort,
creaking and grotesque, laughable in the postures
of every emotion from agony to ecstasy.
In this light, the strings are quite invisible.
and as he grimaces and begs, as he weeps,
playing his tragi-comic part we think:

This dangling, impotent thing gains life from her,
his invisible cool mistress hidden behind the veil,
that puppeteer, whose nimble fingers move him,
knows intimately the fibres of his being.
How does he dare, this clown, this aging fool,
to think to cease to love her still? And if she tire
of him, let fall or cut the strings and leave,
should he resent the sudden stillness of his heart?

III

And then, lest we should think her cruel,
recall: she too cries, there behind the curtain
watching herself cause her creature pain:
she too dances on another's strings ' call it God,
or Fate, or her Past - has made her what she is;
she too follows a script written by others,
and her power comes only from his love.

February-March 2006