Shakespeare Revisited Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Will Shakespeare was born suckling the English language
Draining its dugs of phrases, verses, verbs
Words dripped in his ears the livelong day

He lapped up colonies of creatures, characters, categories
Odes, lyrics, legends, myths, fattened his flesh

Similes, metaphors dogged his infant steps
Prospective tragedies, the stuff of Tudor childhood
Born in a village recently plague depleted

Genius thickened his porridge
He would sneak off into the forest from the hayfield
Where blackbirds sang, to woo his wealthy wife

Honeysuckle drowned the meadow hedges
Hollyhocks head high flourished in this Eden

Here on the threshing floor of youth
He grew in symbolism, a peacock rising
From a peck of sparrows.
Chameleon dramatist, a man of many masks