Shakespeare, Where Are You? (For Harold Bloom) Poem by Shalom Freedman

SHAKESPEARE, WHERE ARE YOU? (FOR HAROLD BLOOM)

Shakespeare, where are you?
You should be living at this hour.
Literature has need of you.
We have become a fen of stagnant voices
A parody of noble and great lines
All our efforts have become a deriding
Of our own spirit.
We need your Beauty and your Magnitude
The Metaphoric motions of your Incredible most awkward Lines
We need Your Richness and Your Song
Your Endless Entertainment of our own Emotions
Your deep play of Character and Feeling
We need you now Shakespeare
To remind us that to be Human
Is still to be the Glory Jest and Riddle
And that our voices somehow can still say
In Times beyond our own knowing
The wisdom and the way
To what is best within and beyond us