I Watch My Daughter Perform Shakespeare

 

Five years old I watch Olivier’s HAMLET

on a black and white television;

these words are true, I think .

this is something real to remember.

At thirty three I walk around a lake,

Murmuring Hamlet’s words into the ear

Of my tiny newborn daughter Kate.

Thirty-eight years your words have

run through me like a fever, Will

cut me like a chisel

inspired and infected me,

real as any lover,

each ten-beat line the curve of a hip

or a shoulder blade

or a leap into space

or the languid spiral of a spine.

Today Kate performs Helena,

In a book-shelved library,

Behind her through French doors the rain falls in sheets

A tempest

Sixty nervous guests sit, your words

Flying across the screens of their minds like comets;

Mark Anthony prepares to sway the angry crowd,

Lady Macbeth readies her husband’s knife,

And Kate

Breathes in that first impossible breath

Like a newborn thrust into light

How happy some o’er other some can be

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she

Her little heart pounding along with the iambs;

Her blue eyes bright

Her little body lines and yet no curves;

The audience’s faces

Not painted actor’s masks for once,

But flowers inclining toward the sun,

The real view is from up there,

On what your words can do to a human face.

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she

She says, the words

An ancient echo of

Of the bone real truth of them

And I say stay here,

You faces of lost souls;

You mothers’ faces gazing on new life;

You pilgrims’ faces looking on the promised land;

Don’t forget again, I say,

This is something real to remember

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she

In my seat again I pray

All I want for my daughter is a string of moments like this one, Will,

Of knowing and being known

Her father, her children, her audience

That’s enough,

That’s enough for a good life,

And years from now,

Past volumes of lines she and I have yet to see or imagine

I’ll squeeze her hand, and say

Remember

Remember

Remember

That time

It rained, and you did Shakespeare in the library.