The Tragic Life Of Tragedy Poem by TALAL KASSAD

Chorus:

Address yourself to things that show the truth,
To things that more mislead than guide the youth.
Inside the campus lay the two despaired
With such a sight as leaves your hope impaired,
One made to laugh, the other made to moan,
But laughter had a better sense than known,
Because a man at times may laugh to take
The breath by which by which a cry of pain to make
And then to send it out again and wail:
“The college air is too repugnant to inhale”

Tragedy:

I am the one at whom they hurl abuse
The one who suffered such a passive use,
The tragic work which makes some readers keep
Laughing at those who write to make them weep.

Comedy:

I am the comic work, which sometimes may
Well make the students pass a tragic day

Tragedy:

At times I find it more or less unfair
To plunge the students into grim despair.
In every subject they may do their best
To get a mark surpassing all the rest.
Since eighty four is what they hope to reach
But what they get is forty-eight in each.

Tragedy:

They set themselves to teach me all the while.
Yet failed to know how far they me beguile.
With all the books they have they like to choose
The worst to gain and hence the best to lose.
The spell they cast upon some readers may
Ensnare their hearts and lead their minds astray.

Comedy:

Suppose I told you I once loved them best!

(Tragedy faints)

I loved them not for that was all in jest.
Suppose for instance you were told to write
A comment on what I will soon recite:
“Be Homer’s work your study and delight
Read them by day and meditate at night”

Tragedy:

The one who wrote this sanguine verse is Pope,
Who left the students crying out for hope.
If like a goat the so-called god depraves
Himself then guess how faithful are the slaves!
The Iliad seems to be replete with names
Of gods and heroes like the childish games.
They serve a function if a man should seek
To name his son as do the Greek.
As Saussure puts it, if a language dies
Then death is what this language signifies.

Comedy:

I wonder how you failed your last exam!
‘Tis wise of you that you are never calm.

Tragedy:

But when I failed they found me fit to purge
The keen emotions by my piteous surge.
When drawing on the gods and poking fun
Our father, Homer, left us both at one.
Yet still a teacher came to marry me.
How in the world can I on this agree?

Comedy:

I told my teacher when she flapped her hair
“Your ringlet, darling, has no time to spare”
I put a candy right beside her coat,
A candy on the case of which I wrote:
“Be like the candy, which I love and buy,
And like the seed which though concealed gets high”

Comedy:

But still I have another thing to say,
That seems to keenly grieve us all today.

Tragedy:

Is it the thing we talked about before?
Or something else that wounds us even more?

Comedy:

The thing that left me all the more enraged
May well occasion you to be deranged.
At first I thought the losing card is yours,
But what I found is what one most abhors.

Tragedy:

The moment I recall my sordid past
My heart for sorrows makes a great repast.
To rid myself of sorrows, first, I need
To purify my soul of that misdeed.
For one mistake in my apprentice phase
I languished in the chains of pain for days.
Then by reversal I could recognize
What sort of doom this error underlies.
I rue the day I gave myself to those
Who spoiled my life by what their minds impose.

Comedy:

I used to laugh but now I have to weep
Because our sorrows both went deep.

Tragedy:

I’ll make my will to you before I die
Because the tragic hero seems but I,
Since neither life nor death I feel I do
Obtain but something found betwixt the two.
(She plucks an eye of hers)

Chorus:

She plucked one eye and let its sister weep
Because no longer could she fall asleep.

Comedy:

The fear invoked by such a pitied soul
Commenced to grow and overcome us all.
To vocalize my pain I say in brief
That none but silence can give voice to grief.
(She stabs her belly and falls dead)