Death and the Fool

Like a bad actor on a stage,

he enters on his cue, says his piece,

and exits, uncaring about all else,

deadened, unmoved by the sound of his own voice,

not moving others with his hollow sounds.

Thus across this stage of life I went,

without power or worth, why did this happen to me?

Why is it you, Death, who must first teach me to see life,

not as through a veil, but fully and alert,

there waking something, passing away before me?

Why does such a glorious sacred feeling

about the things of life seize children's reverie,

that when those things really come about

they bring only stale shudders of memory?

Why does your violin not sound for us,

Stirring up the hidden world of ghosts

that every bosom in secret surely hosts,

but buried, and silent to our consciousness

as flowers buried in a field of stone.

Could I but be with you,

where you are all I hear,

and not be disturbed

by tangled trivialities.

I can do it, I do not fear,

Grant to me what you have threatened.

Since death was my life,

Be now you my life, death.

What makes me, who doesn't recognize either,

name you, death, and that, life?

More life into one hour is by you compressed

than all of life could hold,

The shadow world I'll leave now,

and surrender to your marvels and powers.

These could be merely ramblings of a dying soul

stirred up by a mortal bloody wakefulness,

but never have I grasped with all of life's senses

as much as I do now, and so I call it good.

Extinguished, I am now to pass away,

But with my brain held in this hour's sway,

may it fade away, all this pale life:

It is only as I die, that I feel I am alive.

In dreams, excessive dreamed emotions

can cause a sudden stark awakening.

Now rising with a surfeit of emotions,

I leave the dream of life and enter death's awakening.

Claudio sinks down at Death's feet.

Death, shaking his head as he exits:

How wondrous are these creatures,

who explain what brooks no explanation;

what was never writ still they read;

unravel tangled knots with grace and power,

and ways yet find in darkness's eternal hour.