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Last Act of Hamlet

by Barbara Daniels

A sparrow falls, but no-one hears the sound
as those dun feathers meet the crumbling soil.
Can its soft death, unnoticed, feed the ground
and cause another from a poisoned foil?
The happening is now:  what is to come
requires a reader to decode the text
and funeral marchers, ready with their drum,
must wait till one find leads on to the next.
We’re like Horatio, the constant friend,
outside the main plot, never truly heard:
“Say you are not fit,” we plead:  the end
beats in our ears, the echo from one bird.
   If we leave that small corpse alone and look
   the other way, can we rewite the book?


Barbara Daniels has six collections of poetry published and a website www.FormalPoetryetc.com.

Pat Jones
Published 31 May 2011