Hamlet At Wittenberg Poem by Laurence Overmire

Arrant knave that I am
What should such fellows as I do
Crawling beneath heaven and earth
Unable to pen the verse
The quivering pedant demands
Strict to the form, alas
Poor Yorick, they do not know him.

How stand I then
My truth beholden to the mirror
Which at the first and now
Was and is
To hold as ‘twere, nature accountable.
Am I man or beast
The chief good and market of my time
But to sleep and feed?

No more.
Let me not think on’t.
Here be the stops.
Though I may be fretted
I will not be played upon.
Should all occasions inform against me
The rest shall not be silence.


(Previously published in Some Words: A Place for Poetry, Aug 2004)