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Pauline Kirk
Translation Café 239, interview p57
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from The Elsinore Diaries
IX Queen Gertrude’s Diary: The Players
The players came to our court today,
it is not often that we get a chance.
I always liked them, they are skilful.
They usually give a good performance.
This time the play was not so good,
we did not stay to see the end.
Their Queen talked on and on about her love,
how she would always venerate the King’s memory –
who’d said that he was ailing –
would never love another man at any time,
no matter how many years would pass.
No woman in her middle years should say that
when she feels capable of passion.
And then the nephew slays the King
by pouring poison in his ear
while he lies sleeping.
At seeing this, Claudius calls for lights
and leaves, most of us with him.
He was livid, I’ve never seen him like this.
What sort of play is this?
It was not entertaining as it should.
Villainous fantasy, he called it.
So far removed from real life.
Alice Beer
from “The Elsinore Diaries”, a sequence of 10 poems
first published in Envoi, No. 136, (as “The Hamlet Diaries”), 2003;
in collection, Talking of Pots, People & Points of View, 2005,
poetry p f, ISBN 978-0-9552040-0-5
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