BACK THEN MACBETH

BACK THEN MACBETH

watched Shakespeare’s Macbeth
with all of my school class
back then in the sixties
marvellous setting: an outdoor
stage in a park.
surrounded by woods

and me in the front row
suddenly suprised by
my Jewish classmate
rushing up
to sit next to me
let me share her blanket

and so,
we watched the play
(later I would audition
at this same theatre
to join the cast, as an extra,
in Anthony and Cleopatra

later
as a student, and as an intrigued
observer of the authorship
controversy, would
take Shakespeare in
fat doses, not exactly
in quantities though
to take me up
to my ears

but then I thought
good things in woods, bad
things in
woods
   soldiers with tree branch
camouflage to peversely
help realize
hidden divine justice
at the heart
of evil prophecy

and as for Lynne
with her blanket
        she got me in her
school play, saw
her around at University

wondered about
magic and
evil
    and things beyond
human understanding,
re-defining the limits of
malignity and cruelty,
hatred of other
politics
   of pure power, fear
and revenge

a witches’ concoction
brewing away in
the dark
core of
    this darkness, deep heart
of the forest

I wonder now
what we all
of made of it, how it
shaped us
    in what ways we
too might think, dream
of murder,
         the grasping of power
believing
it is what we deserve

back then
Macbeth, for three solid hours,
prisoners of that imagination