It did not seem a lonely life

It did not seem a lonely life
Christopher Bogart

It did not seem a lonely life;
But just a life I’d live alone.

A path that seemed so ordinary,
So all at once ordained,
Seemed laid upon an even plain with
Little broken glass,
Few stones.

The silence of an empty home
In time, just seemed so comforting,
So near that I could clearly hear
The blowing noise of heat and air,
The dropping ice cubes in a white plastic pan,
The regular rotations of the ceiling fan,
The isolated ticking of the clock,
That punctuated passing time.

I rarely stopped to question much
The absence of a warming touch,
A tender hand,
A whisper in the dark.

The wind and rain on stormy nights
Pounded the silence,
Washed away my past regrets,
All traces of missed happiness,
Past pain.

Stark duty always seemed to drive me on
Through days, each born on soft routine,
Hand strung, and drifting on the stream
Passed silent doubt,
Without rhyme nor reason,
I question not what seemed
To be so reasonable.

And, in the end, it did not seem
That it would be such a lonely life.
But just a life I’d live alone.

One rarely thinks of snow.

Sonnet 7
Christopher Bogart

All that you were was all I’d never be
When first we met that warm September night.
I was repressed, and you were so carefree.
‘Twas no surprise our first words were to fight.
‘Twas no surprise when young head butted old
Though barely four Septembers came between
Our births and our young lives yet to unfold:
‘Twas seize the day against what could have been.
Yet somehow we saw past the barricades
And fled our fortresses for open ground.
Our hearts held hope that hope would never fade
As summer turned to fall without a sound.
Our love was new. Our lives had far to go.
On summer nights, one rarely thinks of snow.

"And if I built a fortress around your heart..."

I always loved the lyrics to the song by Sting, "Fortress Around Your Heart." I thought that the words were deceptively simple, yet poetic and profound. He wrote the song as a part of the 1985 album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. Sting thought it was pretty poetic too because, in an interview after the single was released, he said "Fortress is about appeasement, about trying to bridge the gaps between individuals. The central image is a minefield that you've laid around this other person to try and protect them. Then you realize that you have to walk back through it. I think it's one of the best choruses I've ever written."

The melody to the song is haunting, and reminded me of a time when I had done the same thing to someone I had loved. Later in my life, I wrote a sonnet about it. I will post that sonnet tomorrow. For tonight, I would like to share the lyrics to "Fortress" with you.

Fortress Around Your Heart
Sting

Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers and beams of yellow light
No flags of truce, no cries of pity
The siege guns had been pounding all through the night
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the field's I'd known
I recognized the walls that I once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

Then I went off to fight some battle
That I'd invented inside my head
Away so long for years and years
You probably thought or even wished that I was dead
While the armies are all sleeping
Beneath the tattered flag we'd made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

This prison has now become your home
A sentence you seem prepared to pay
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the lands I'd known
I recognized the fields where I'd once played
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire.

Hope Floats

Sonnet 19
Christopher Bogart

Brisk breezes float him toward a pristine shore
Where true intentions bob beyond the foam.
His hopes too float on swells he’s rode before.
So many times, so many journeys home.
And, in those journeys, what’s been lost and found
Of life that shows increased upon his brow?
He strolls knee deep in issues as profound
As those of sober childhood, long - gone now.
Gone, an adolescence, tanned and strong,
Gone to intellect and tame pursuits.
Through youth deferred come strains of sorrow’s song
As time through crumbling passages still shoots.
Will he hold hopes above his sorrows borne
Until new hope illuminates new morns?

The Saboteur

Sonnet 11
Christopher Bogart

A canopy of leaves obscure the light.
The jungle’s undergrowth shred his fatigue.
The only right he knows now is to fight
A fight that always brings him to his knees.
He trudges through the jungle day by day,
Slashing at the forest with his knife,
To forge a path that leads him on his way
To fight the force that’s threatening his life.
He carries all his weapons. His defense,
The well-worn maps he uses to retreat.
These tactics that have made so little sense
Forever will insure his sound defeat.
When victory appears before his eyes,
The saboteur knows how to blow the prize.

The Tempest

Tempest Dance
Christopher Bogart

Wild winds toss me across fields of high waving grass,
thrash my knees, my ankles, my calves,
slash me with the sharp edges of dark green spears.

Moonlight crafts pale shadows,
lunar landscapes swirl with memory’s ghosts.
Shades skim across blades of green.
The melodious bow sweep of violin strings, to
Play songs to me that were once so sweet,

Now so very violent,
tugging on my sinews,
snatching self-control.

Moods swirl music,
to dance to their tunes, their hysterical tunes,
once so sweet, so very sweet,

Now so very bitter,
They sweep over me
as shadow waves,
the dark murky blue-green of an island ocean,
raking me over smooth stones on the hard pebbled floor.

Under the midnight moon,
my gorge fills with bile,
my head, with visions of angels,
their pale familiar faces wrenched from distant memories,
dancing up against
the windows of my soul, these
diaphanous dolls in wispy white rags,
jigging and jerking,
flailing and fleeing with the sharp tugs of strings
held by some mad puppeteer, when

Suddenly, the wind scoops me up into its gentle hands,
its firm hands, my very life
held in the wells of pliant palms,
their airy fingers twirl me around and around like

A plaything,
a rag doll,
tossed on this tempest of confused and conflicting feeling.


I feel light, and
so very empty.
My life drains in ruby droplets, spattered to the

Frost of cold damp ground,
running down along the spines of high green grasses,
dripping into sticky red puddles,
reflecting the image of an uncaring moon.

Soon, an eerie silence descends
as the icy angels of the frosted night
force their fingers into open wounds,
open tombs,
too late to feel,
to soon to heal the
gashes in my soul.

Green grass becomes my sepulcher.
Brown ground out,
I wait for light to shatter night,
to force the winds to yield at last,
and if by some unerring chance,
to end the torture
of this tempest dance.

Fallen Warrior

Blue Spruce
Christopher Bogart

A fir tree fell in my yard the other day
A strong gust of wind in a nor’easter blew it over.
I only had three trees on the property,
A huge swamp maple in the back
A skinny little brother in the front,
One that has learned not to get his limbs
Entangled in the electrical wires,
And a tall, stately blue spruce
Whose fir and pine cones provided
Decoration for Christmases past.
It was not meant to last.
In the not so distant past
It had been leaning away from the yard
Like it wanted to escape
But, instead, decided to hit the deck,
Well, not actually the deck,
It was kind enough to lay
Down gently on the grass.
It did not disturb the fence,
The gardens, the deck
Or me
By its long, but anticipated, fall.
It went peacefully in its sleep,
Laying down
Without a sound.

Brown Hands

In light of the Governor of Arizona signing today a new bill that would allow police to check the identification of anyone they suspect of being an illegal alien, this poem seems prescient. However, this blog is about words and writing, not politics. I wrote this poem a few days ago, after viewing a few Mexicans walking along the side of the road, on their way to work. The rest is serendipity.

Brown Hands
Christopher Bogart

course brown hands
thrust deep in pockets of
baggy blue jeans.
they trudge along trails
once lined with cactus
now edged with congestion.
they balance on the edge
of our existence,
poor anomalies
in a land of plenties.
their lunches are
wrapped in the same
used brown paper
as their anonymous
brown lives.
they finger thread beads,
they pray for pay,
day labor,
anchor babies
in a world of maybes,
they dream
brown dreams,
not to be seen.

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare!

William Shakespeare
April 22, 1564 – April 23, 1616

Famous Quotes about William Shakespeare

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good - in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves (1895 - 1985)

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
That such trivial people should muse and thunder
In such lovely language.
D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930)

Or sweetest Shakespear, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
John Milton (1608 - 1674)

What needs my Shakespeare for his honour’d bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones,
Or that his hallow’d relics should be hid
Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
John Milton (1608 - 1674) Epitaph on Shakespeare


Shakespeare - The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.
Laurence Olivier (1907 - 1989)



Wonderful women! Have you ever thought how much we all, and women especially, owe to Shakespear for his vindication of women in these fearless, high-spirited, resolute and intelligent heroines?
Dame Ellen Terry (1848 – 1928)



There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o’ the world; oh, eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 - 1861), "A Vision of Poets"


With this same key
Shake-speare unlocked his heart' once more!
Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shake-speare he!
Robert Browning (1812 - 1899), "House"



If called to define Shakespeare's faculty, I should say superiority of intellect, and think I had included all under that.
Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881) "Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History"



When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, “Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quote (1803 - 1882) "Letters and Social Aims"



“He was not of an age, but for all time!”
Ben Jonson (1573 - 1637)

"By Words, the Mind is Winged!"

The picture above is of the William Shakespeare rose, named for the great Bard of Avon. Tonight, I have posted quotes from different Shakespeare plays that have made it into our everyday speech today. I am sure that you will recognize at least one or two of these quotes in your own daily speech.

Two quotes come to mind that would explain the importance of words.

He gave man speech, and speech created thought, which is the measure of the universe. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound II.iv.

By words the mind is winged. Aristophanes.

William Shakespeare has given us a great legacy with the words of his poetry and his plays; and,by these words, our mind takes wing.


"This above all: to thine own self be true" Hamlet (Act I, Sc. III).

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Hamlet (Act III, Sc. II).

"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.” Hamlet (Act II, Scene II).

"Brevity is the soul of wit.” Hamlet (Act II, Scene II).

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions". Hamlet (Act IV, Scene V).

"But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.” Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene II).

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” Julius Caesar (Act II, Scene II).

"Beware the ides of March". Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene II).

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" King Lear (Act I, Scene IV).

"Nothing will come of nothing." King Lear (Act I, Scene I).

"I am a man more sinned against than sinning" King Lear (Act III, Scene II).

"Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness." Macbeth (Act I, Scene V).

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" Macbeth (Act V, Scene I).

"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Macbeth (Act V, Scene V).

"I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at". Othello (Act I, Scene I).

"It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock" Othello (Act III)

"Can one desire too much of a good thing?" As You Like It (Act IV, Scene I).

"True is it that we have seen better days" As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII).

"Why, then the world 's mine oyster" The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act II, Scene II).

"This is the short and the long of it". Merry Wives of Windsor (Act II, Scene II).

"As good luck would have it.” Merry Wives of Windsor (Act III, Scene V).

"I'll not budge an inch". Taming of the Shrew (Induction, Scene I)

Who wooed in haste, and means to wed at leisure. The Taming of the Shrew (Act III. Scene 2).

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” The Tempest. (Act II. Scene. 2.)

"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene V).

“If music be the food of love, play on.” Twelfth Night (Act I. Scene 1.)

“This is very midsummer madness.” Twelfth Night (Act III. Scene 4.)

“Out of the jaws of death.” Twelfth Night. (Act III. Scene 4.)

"He will give the devil his due.” Henry IV, Part I (Act I, Scene II).

"The better part of valour is discretion.” Henry IV, Part I (Act V, Scene IV)

"He hath eaten me out of house and home.” Henry IV Part II (Act II, Scene I).

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Henry IV, Part II (Act III, Scene I).

"A man can die but once.” Henry IV, Part II (Act III, Scene II).

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” King Henry V (Act IV. Scene 3.)

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” King Henry V (Act III. Scene 1.)

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". King Henry VI (Act IV, Scene II)

“The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on.” King Henry VI, Part III (Act II Scene 2.)

"The king's name is a tower of strength.” Richard III (Act V, Scene III).

"Off with his head!" Richard III (Act III, Scene IV).

"So wise so young, they say, do never live long.” Richard III (Act III, Scene I).

"Now is the winter of our discontent.” Richard III (Act I, Scene I).

"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" Richard III (Act V, Scene IV).

The Moor

In those 38 plays he wrote, Shakespeare confronted issues that have taken hundreds of years to resolve. In a number of his plays, the role of women in Elizabethan society is continually being redefined. Maybe that was because England was ruled by a woman, one who understood the drawbacks of this position in society.

In this play, however, Shakespeare takes on the almost unheard of issue of race. Race was not really an issue in Elizabethan society, as there were few people living in England that were not Anglo-Saxon/Norman English. Even the “dark lady” of Shakespeare’s later sonnets is believed to be a Venetian Jew. But in this play, Shakespeare takes his audience to Venice and the promotion of a Moor (a black North African) to the head of the Venetian army. This Moor also falls in love with, and marries, the daughter of an influential Venetian, Desdemona. While this promotion and marriage causes some eyebrows to raise in Venice, it infuriates a fellow officer, Iago to action. The play becomes a vehicle of innuendo and duplicity as Iago plants doubts in Othello’s mind, doubts that lead to tragedy.

In Act III, Scene iii, the following dialogue between Othello and Iago illustrates the pernicious nature of this betrayal.


Othello

Act III, Scene iii


OTHELLO
Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,
But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.

IAGO
My noble lord--

OTHELLO
What dost thou say, Iago?

IAGO
Did Michael Cassio, when you woo'd my lady,
Know of your love?

OTHELLO
He did, from first to last: why dost thou ask?

IAGO
But for a satisfaction of my thought;
No further harm.

OTHELLO
Why of thy thought, Iago?

IAGO
I did not think he had been acquainted with her.

OTHELLO
O, yes; and went between us very oft.

IAGO
Indeed!

OTHELLO
Indeed! ay, indeed: discern'st thou aught in that?
Is he not honest?

IAGO
Honest, my lord!

OTHELLO
Honest! ay, honest.

IAGO
My lord, for aught I know.

OTHELLO
What dost thou think?

IAGO
Think, my lord!

OTHELLO
Think, my lord!
By heaven, he echoes me,
As if there were some monster in his thought
Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something:
I heard thee say even now, thou likedst not that,
When Cassio left my wife: what didst not like?
And when I told thee he was of my counsel
In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst 'Indeed!'
And didst contract and purse thy brow together,
As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain
Some horrible conceit: if thou dost love me,
Show me thy thought.

There have been a number of performances of this play on film, the most noteworthy in my opinion, is the one with Lawrence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh. However, the film “O”, while popular recently, is merely a use of the plays theme without the language of Shakespeare and the power of his way of telling the story (Shakespeare Lite, if you will).

Kiss Me, Kate!

The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1594. It was published in 1623.
The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a drunken tinker named Sly is tricked into thinking he is a nobleman by a mischievous Lord. The Lord has a play performed for Sly's amusement, set in Padua with a primary and sub-plot.

The main plot depicts the courtship of Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, and Katherina, the headstrong, obdurate shrew. Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship, but Petruchio tempers her with various psychological torments — the "taming" — until she is an obedient bride. The sub-plot features a competition between the suitors of Katherina's more tractable sister, Bianca.

The play's apparent misogynistic elements have become the subject of considerable controversy, particularly among modern audiences and readers. It has nevertheless been adapted numerous times for stage, screen, opera, and musical theatre; perhaps the most famous adaptations being Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate and the film 10 Things I Hate About You. (Wikapedia,the free encyclopedia)

This comedy by William Shakespeare is probably the best example of Comedia Del Arte comedy in the English language. It is also another example, joining Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, of a play within a play. It seems that Shakespeare was fascinated by this concept, as he seems to challenge his own skill as a dramatist again and again.

This play combines slapstick comedy with serious, albeit tongue-in-cheek, commentary on the roles of men and women in society. The following is a great example of Shakespeare's love of playing with words to create comedy.


THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

Act II, Scene i


PETRUCHIO

Good morrow, Kate; for that's your name, I hear.

KATHARINA

Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing:
They call me Katharina that do talk of me.

PETRUCHIO

You lie, in faith; for you are call'd plain Kate,
And bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst;
But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom
Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,
For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate,
Take this of me, Kate of my consolation;
Hearing thy mildness praised in every town,
Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,
Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,
Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife.

KATHARINA

Moved! in good time: let him that moved you hither
Remove you hence: I knew you at the first
You were a moveable.

PETRUCHIO

Why, what's a moveable?

KATHARINA

A join'd-stool.

PETRUCHIO

Thou hast hit it: come, sit on me.

KATHARINA

Asses are made to bear, and so are you.

PETRUCHIO

Women are made to bear, and so are you.

KATHARINA

No such jade as you, if me you mean.

PETRUCHIO

Alas! good Kate, I will not burden thee;
For, knowing thee to be but young and light--

KATHARINA

Too light for such a swain as you to catch;
And yet as heavy as my weight should be.

PETRUCHIO

Should be! should--buzz!

KATHARINA

Well ta'en, and like a buzzard.

PETRUCHIO

O slow-wing'd turtle! shall a buzzard take thee?

KATHARINA

Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard.

PETRUCHIO

Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry.

KATHARINA

If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

PETRUCHIO

My remedy is then, to pluck it out.

KATHARINA

Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies,

PETRUCHIO

Who knows not where a wasp does
wear his sting? In his tail.

KATHARINA

In his tongue.

PETRUCHIO

Whose tongue?

KATHARINA

Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.

PETRUCHIO

What, with my tongue in your tail? nay, come again,
Good Kate; I am a gentleman.

KATHARINA

That I'll try.

She strikes him

PETRUCHIO

I swear I'll cuff you, if you strike again.

KATHARINA

So may you lose your arms:
If you strike me, you are no gentleman;
And if no gentleman, why then no arms.

PETRUCHIO

A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books!

KATHARINA

What is your crest? a coxcomb?

PETRUCHIO

A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.

KATHARINA

No cock of mine; you crow too like a craven.

PETRUCHIO

Nay, come, Kate, come; you must not look so sour.

KATHARINA

It is my fashion, when I see a crab.

PETRUCHIO

Why, here's no crab; and therefore look not sour.

KATHARINA

There is, there is.

PETRUCHIO

Then show it me.

KATHARINA

Had I a glass, I would.

PETRUCHIO

What, you mean my face?

KATHARINA

Well aim'd of such a young one.

PETRUCHIO

Now, by Saint George, I am too young for you.

KATHARINA

Yet you are wither'd.

PETRUCHIO

'Tis with cares.

KATHARINA

I care not.

PETRUCHIO

Nay, hear you, Kate: in sooth you scape not so.

KATHARINA

I chafe you, if I tarry: let me go.

PETRUCHIO

No, not a whit: I find you passing gentle.
'Twas told me you were rough and coy and sullen,
And now I find report a very liar;
For thou are pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,
But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers:
Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,
Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will,
Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk,
But thou with mildness entertain'st thy wooers,
With gentle conference, soft and affable.
Why does the world report that Kate doth limp?
O slanderous world! Kate like the hazel-twig
Is straight and slender and as brown in hue
As hazel nuts and sweeter than the kernels.
O, let me see thee walk: thou dost not halt.

KATHARINA

Go, fool, and whom thou keep'st command.

PETRUCHIO

Did ever Dian so become a grove
As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?
O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate;
And then let Kate be chaste and Dian sportful!

KATHARINA

Where did you study all this goodly speech?

PETRUCHIO

It is extempore, from my mother-wit.

KATHARINA

A witty mother! witless else her son.

PETRUCHIO

Am I not wise?

KATHARINA

Yes; keep you warm.

PETRUCHIO

Marry, so I mean, sweet Katharina, in thy bed:
And therefore, setting all this chat aside,
Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented
That you shall be my wife; your dowry 'greed on;
And, Will you, nill you, I will marry you.
Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn;
For, by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,
Thy beauty, that doth make me like thee well,
Thou must be married to no man but me;
For I am he am born to tame you Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.
Here comes your father: never make denial;
I must and will have Katharina to my wife.

This England

Shakespeare wrote 38 plays, divided into three categories: comedies, tragedies and historic plays. His historic plays promoted patriotism in the largely illiterate class while dealing with important observations on governance in the educated classes. These plays were ostensibly mini-lessons in history, whether it was Greek and Roman (Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar) or whether he put the Greek history into Roman garb (Titus Andronicus). He sometimes even set a thoroughly English comedy into a Greek setting, such as the setting and characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, most often he opened the panoply of English history to his audiences with plays like Henry IV (Parts I and II), Richard III and Henry V, to name a few.

Written in 1595, Richard II leads us to the Henry plays with cruel and manipulative King Richard II and a noble and patriotic John of Gaunt. Like Shakespeare's other historic plays, Richard II entertained all strata of society, reminding them of their history while entertaining them by tales of nobility, treachery and brilliant fighting scenes, for London's largely illiterate population. A few if these plays were written with extreme care, like Henry VIII, a play that told the story of the kingship of the present queen's father. However sometimes Shakespeare, despite his political astuteness, got himself into the thick of it without even meaning to. Such was the case with one particular performance of Richard II.

Robert Devereaux, the young and handsome Earl of Essex, one of Queen Elizabeth's favorites, became frustrated with the Queen's ministers blocking his political agenda, and organized a plot to take over the government and oust her ministers. On February 8, 1601 with the young Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, and a number of his confederates, he planned to storm the castle and take over the Queen's government. In order to "psyche" his followers up, and without telling the company, he hired Shakespeare and his players on February 7, the night before, to perform the play, Richard II, as it dealt with a similar crisis in English history. Shakespeare's acting company was given a handsome sum of money to perform this play, by unfortunately, when Devereaux's plot failed and he was captured and beheaded, Shakespeare was called before the Queen's Council to answer for his "part in the plot." Faced with charges of treason, charges that caused two of his cousins to be executed previously, Shakespeare barely escaped with his life and reputation by explaining that they were unaware of Devereaux's plot and were just doing their job, and payed well for it. Such is the dramatic effect of much of Shakespeare's writing on Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

It is into John of Gaunt’s mouth that Shakespeare puts some of the most moving words in the play and one of his most eloquent speeches about his love of his country. The speech, not unlike our song, “America, the Beautiful” is a tribute to the love of a land that is timeless. During the lowest point in Germany’s air attacks on Great Britain during World War II, Winston Churchill reminded his people using Shakespeare’s words, of this love of their country. For anyone who has the pleasure of visiting this country, as I have, they have seen for themselves the land that these words describe. It is truly a mystical place.


John of Gaunt: This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

What fools these mortals be!

“Lord, What fools these mortals be!” Puck (Act III, Scene ii)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and most beloved comedies. It combines the names and places of ancient Athens with the costumes and mores of Elizabethan England. It is divided into two worlds (the real and the fantasy). The real world is the world of love frustrated, two young women forced into marriages with the wrong men. The four young people decide to flee Athens and seek their loves in freedom beyond the forest. However, the forest is the world of fantasy, ruled by Queen Titania and King Oberon. One source describes it this way:

Hermia and her lover Lysander decide to escape through the forest at night. Hermia informs her friend Helena, but Helena has recently been rejected by Demetrius and decides to win back his favour by revealing the plan to him. Demetrius, followed doggedly by Helena, chases Hermia. Hermia and Lysander, believing themselves safely out of reach, sleep in the woods.

Sound confusing? It’s meant to. This is a comedy of the beauty and the absurdity of love. (Kind of like Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit with laughs and without the waiting room.) It has a number of elements of “commedia del arte” a highly stylized Italian comedy style that relies heavily on sight gags. And to top it all off, it is “a play within a play within a play.”

Did I mention, this play, like Romeo and Juliet, is based on Greek myth, "Pyramus and Thysbe?" This myth is actually performed in the last act of this play on stage for the other characters. And, since the play ends with a wedding; Felix Mendelssohn, who wrote music to accompany this play two hundred years after it was written, wrote a wedding march for the three weddings at the end of the play. You guessed it! We use his wedding march today when the bride walks down the isle. And all because Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream has some great and memorable lines:

The course of true love never did run smooth. (Lysander, Act I, Scene i)

And though she be but little, she is fierce. Helena (Act III, Scene ii)

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Lovers, to bed, ’tis almost fairy time. Theseus ( Act V, Scene i)

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name. Theseus, (Act V, Scene i)


And finally, the explanation that Puck (Robin Goodfellow) gives to the audience for all of the madness they have witnessed throughout the last five acts:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends. Puck (Act V, Scene i)

What a Piece of Work is Man

Ask someone if they can think of the name of a Shakespeare play and most will mention Hamlet. It is probably, after Romeo and Juliet, his best known play. One of the reasons for this is that the main character, Hamlet, is one of his most challenging roles in all of acting. It is considered to be the final test of acting ability, and has been played by the likes of Lord Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, Mel Gibson, David Tennant, Ethan Hawke, Jude Law as well as Edwin Booth, brother of the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth. The role has even been played by a woman, the great Sarah Burnhardt.

To understand why this play seems to be Shakespeare’s most popular yet least understood play, you have to look at what makes it so different. Romeo and Juliet is about the sometimes tragic nature of young love, Much Ado About Nothing about the folly of love, Othello about envy and bigotry, The Merchant of Venice about anti-Semitism, Twelfth Night about the role of women in society. But Hamlet seems to be an enigma. It is an introspective play that makes the reader/viewer look into the nature and role of each individual within not only his own family, but within his own world as well. And in the end, there are no clear answers to the dilemmas it raises. Shakespeare himself was a bit of a “troubled prince” when he wrote this play in 1599, three years after his only son, Hamnet, died suddenly at the age of eleven.

I guess that tonight's post on Hamlet would not be complete without the two commentaries on life that Prince Hamlet makes, both different but both a piece of the same cloth of confusion that is what life is sometimes about.

What piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals!

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

St. Crispin's Day

Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to be written in approximately 1599. It is based on the life of King Henry V of England, and focuses on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. (Wikapedia, the free encyclopedia)

The Battle of Agincourt itself is famous not only as a stunning victory for the English against the French encroachment into Normandy, a province owned by the English kings since the invasion of England by William, the Conqueror in 1066. It was also famous for the English and Welsh bowmen's use of the longbow, a tactic crucial to the English victory. The long bowmen were so hated by the French that, for years to come, the French soldiers would stick up the two fingers of their hands (index and middle)in a visual threat to English soldiers, particularly bowmen, that, if captured, they would cut those fingers off so that they could not shoot arrows with their longbows again. This gesture by the French is now used in Great Britain in the same way we, in America, stick up our middle finger. The message is the same, and it has nothing to do with arrows. Some call it flipping the bird.

From this historical play by William Shakespeare comes one of the most rousing speeches ever given before a battle. In Shakespeare's play, it was given by Henry V in Act IV, scene iii before the Battle of Agincourt to rouse his soldiers to victory. In the movie, Renaissance Man, one of the soldiers, in a memorable scene, recites it in the rain on a field maneuver.

It is a beautiful speech, and I am including it in this posting, to share with my readers. I hope you enjoy it as much as I.

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. I have always been fascinated by them. Their format, fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter (ababcdcdefefgg)divided into four sections (introduction of theme, explanation of theme, the "turn," and the couplet that makes the final point) that I have found to be, for me, the perfect sonnet form. While I could appreciate other sonnet forms, and other sonnets, none intrigued me like the sonnets of Shakespeare.

However tonight, as a part of a tribute countdown to his birthday, I would like to point out the more inspirational nature of his sonnets, and one sonnet, in particular. I am not going to explain why I think that Shakespeare's Sonnet 50 and Robert Frost's Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening are "interesting" together. I will leave that to the readers decide for themselves. I don't know whether it is coincidence or mere serendipity. I will leave those conclusions to academics. I'm just saying. I find that these poems seem to belong together. And to complement each other.

SONNET 50
William Shakespeare

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek (my weary travel's end)
Doth teach that case and that repose to say
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.


STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING
Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch is woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

A Pair of Star-Cross'd Lovers

The play that really created a sensation in the world of London theatre in 1597 was William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. What made the play so unusual was not only that the protagonists were only in their teens, or that the play ended with their deaths, but that the playwright told the audience how the play would end, he gave away the ending, in the first ten lines!

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

Yet every audience that has ever seen the play, sits riveted to their seats while they watch a tragedy unfold, one that consumes the lives of the two very young lovers in the bloom of their idealism. In this play, Shakespeare creates dialogue that is both beautiful and inspiring. Its lines are quoted again and again as the standard for love.

Tonight, I would like to present you with one particular piece of dialogue; for, as a teacher of adolescents for over forty years, it has continually fascinated me with the cleverness of Romeo in releasing his hormones to rule over his head, and the coyness of Juliet, who forces him to work for the kiss he is trying to steal. While other parts of the play are more clever or more profound, this particular piece of the play is, to me, the essence of the adolescence of Romeo and Juliet.

ROMEO
[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

As Folger Shakespeare Library has always said, let the lines speak for themselves. And oh how eloquently they speak!

Countdown to Shakespeare's Birthday

In previous posts, I have spoken about my “relationship” with William Shakespeare. I have been teaching his plays and poetry for over forty years in the classroom. I have watched his plays performed live as well as on the big and little screen. One of the most memorable Shakespeare experiences I have had was watching an outdoor performance of Comedy of Errors at Magdalen College at Oxford University in the summer of 2005. I have been writing Shakespearean sonnets for the last ten years, and have enjoyed the writing experience it has provided me with.

On April 22nd, it will be Shakespeare’s 446th birthday. (I am using the 22nd as it is the only provable date as we do not have the exact date of Shakespeare’s birth; but, when his daughter was married on April 22nd, she said that she chose the date to commemorate her father’s birth.)

For the last five years, I have been sending emails to the high school staff from the first day of April with information on Shakespeare’s life and accomplishments to celebrate his birth. Over these last five years, I have been working with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC to provide in-services to our English teachers to improve the quality of education of Shakespearean literature in our school. (I am providing the link to their website as the Library is the largest repository of Shakespearean materials in the world and is both educational and informative: http://www.folger.edu/) Last year, we were the first inner-city school in New Jersey to participate in the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival (“Shakespearience”).

I have tried to research Shakespeare’s life and his works to provide interesting and educational information to the staff of my school so that my meager efforts will ensure that Shakespeare’s works will be appreciated for a long time to come.

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting some of this Shakespeare information for the edification of the readers of my blog as well. It is my research as well as my composition; so, in a way, it qualifies as my writing.

So today, to begin this celebration, I am including the first Shakespearean sonnet I wrote. The topic of this poem is in keeping with other pieces I have written about my impending retirement. It seems that even ten years ago when I wrote it, I knew that “when one door closes, another opens.”

Sonnet 1
Christopher Bogart

Have I succumbed to death within my life?
Have I surrendered oxygen to dust?
Have I bared my emotions with a knife,
Cutting out the pulp, and leaving crust?
Has mediocrity become my battle cry?
When I face the forces of my life arrayed
Before me in a line, do I just sigh,
Dismissing them until another day?
When did I begin to feel a cold
Creeping o’er me slowly like a shroud?
When did I begin to feel old
Yet cease to rail against it, voiced out loud?
I will not gather dust on some cold shelf,
But find bold courage to reinvent myself.

There's a Unicorn in my Garden

“The Unicorn in the Garden” is the title of a short story written by famed American humorist, James Thurber, and published in The New Yorker magazine on October 31, 1939. Thurber illustrated many of his short stories, and I have included the illustration he did for this one in this post.

A few nights ago, Keith Olbermann read this story by Thurber on his TV show, Countdown. The story is typical Thurber, tongue-in-cheek humor with a moral at the end, as the main character claims that he sees a mythical animal in the garden. His wife calls him “booby” and phones the police when he continues to insist that the unicorn is still out there. However, when the police arrive, he denies telling his wife any such thing, and the police take his wife to the “booby-hatch.”

However, as soon as I heard the title of the story, I linked it with a personal experience I am going through now. After a lot of doubts, I filed to retire this June after working for forty-two years, most of them in education. Having finally made that decision, it seems to me that there is a mythical creature in my garden, calling me to enter and enjoy a new life in retirement. I know it sounds crazy, but after working and/or going to schools since I was four years old, the idea of not working to support myself is, I must admit, a little strange and scary. We are raised on the Puritan ethic to believe that having a good job and making a good living is the epitome of life, and the only goal worth achieving.

Now, I know what I’ll do today. But what will I do tomorrow? Maybe that’s what the unicorn is asking me.

There’s a Unicorn in my Garden
Christopher Bogart

I noticed something in my backyard
Not so long ago.
It looked much like an animal,
One I should have known.

But somehow it was different.
It had a single horn,
As if its head was giving birth,
And its point was to be borne.

A point that I refused to see,
Or failed to recognize.
I pretended to ignore it.
I’d let it pass me by.

Soon it began to eat the lilies,
Chomping noisily as it ground,
The flower heads between its teeth,
The stems upon the ground.

It stared at me, right in the eye,
As it dared me to ignore
Its consumption of my garden,
The loss of lilies by the score.

I knew their love for virgins
From a medieval tapestry,
But I wasn’t a virgin.
So why come bother me?

Or maybe I was one, in a sense,
For I had never known
That climbing on a unicorn
Might yield pleasure all its own.

There’s a unicorn in my garden.
He seems to want to stay.
And, even if I ignore him,
I know he will not go away.

The Writer

It was over twenty years ago when I ran into a former student of mine, a very talented young writer who, when I had him in class, came in third place nationally in a writing competition run by a major publishing house. However, I found as the conversation progressed that he had given up writing. What a waste of talent, I thought. And I told him so. "OK." he said, "give me a topic and I will write about it."

"If you do that, so will I. We'll get together at the end of the holiday and compare our stories." He agreed.

I spent the rest of the holiday writing my story. I never saw him again.

This is the story I wrote.


THE WRITER
Christopher Bogart


The room was dark. The faint amber light of one small brass lamp, perched atop a round wooden table near the heavily draped window, was the only illumination in the room. As his eyes became accustomed to the room’s dim light, he could see its furnishings. Heavy cloth drapes tied back to the wooden window frame during the day, had been released, and had fallen closed to allow only the scantest light of the sunset to seep through. A remnant of that light now played on the hardwood floor at the edge of the worn, faded red Oriental rug. Somewhere in the room, an ancient clock chimed eight muffled chimes.

Ahead of him, opposite the window, he saw an enormous desk. Its advanced age was evident in the ornate carvings, most of which receded in the shadows cast by the inadequate light. Between him and this behemoth stood a chair. A chair, or more like a small throne. It too was ornately carved, its arms ending in scroll, its legs with paw-like clawed feet seemed almost to grip the carpet on which it rested.

“Sit!” said a voice coming from somewhere in the shadows behind the desk. The young man navigated around the ornate chair, finally placing himself on the well-worn velvet of its faded seat. “Why have you come?” questioned the voice. The young man stared into the shadows behind the desk, searching for the owner of the voice.

Its owner leaned forward, and as he did so, his face emerged from what was left of the light. It was an old face. A face that seemed to be more of parchment than of skin. Its lines and crevices had been etched by life and by learning, giving it a wise yet still active quality. This old man was not dead yet, the young man thought. His eagle-like eyes shone with a spark of flint and tinder, at once soft and kind, and yet sharp and almost predatory.

“Why have you come?” the voice repeated.

The young man’s mind groped for an answer. He must have known why he was here. He had not been invited, yet he hand felt as if he would be welcome. As his mind whirled around trying to find an adequate answer, a single simple sentence, as if with a mind of its own, escaped from his lips. “I have failed.” He blurted out. Then there was silence. He commanded all the courage he could muster, and looked into the old man’s eyes. Those eyes, probing his, were trying to find an explanation. The uneasy silence continued.

After what seemed an eternity, the young man broke the silence. “I am not a writer.” He looked up into those eyes again; and, in a gesture of despair, his words began to tumble out. “I was never a writer. I tried to write. I wanted to think I could write. Yes, once or twice, I got lucky and wrote a few things. Decent things. But not great things.” The old man’s eyes never moved. If only he would say something, the young man thought. But there was only the silence. Feeling spent and broken by the weight of his own grim evaluation, his eyes left those of the old man and fell on the floor.

“Who told you that you could not write?” questioned the voice, now tinted with anger.

“I did.” Said the young man, never removing his eyes from the floor.

“And what do you know?” the voice replied, more as a statement than as a question. They young man saw no need to respond.

“I was your teacher. You were my most talented and promising student. You had all the potential to be a good writer.” There was a pause. “No!” the old man’s voice boomed from the darkness, “a great writer!” The young man, his eyes now riveted to the threadbare Oriental rug, tried to speak, but he did not know what to say. Words tried to come up, but were choked off at his throat. The resulting sound resembled a muffled sob.

The young man felt the teacher’s eyes bore into the top of his head, which hung in the shame of failure. And yet, if he had only raised his head, he would have seen the compassion that had softened the gaze of the teacher. Since he did not, he became oblivious to everything in the room, except the ancient clock as it chimed nine muffled chimes.

“Don’t you want to write?” the teacher asked.

“I wanted to write.” Responded the young man. And, when there was no response, he repeated softly, “I wanted to write.”

“Then write!” the teacher’s voice shot back from the darkness.

“About what?” questioned the young man. “What in my small life is so important that the world would want to hear of it?”

“Every man’s life is important.” The teacher responded.

“Not mine.” The young man replied; and, with all the courage he could summon, he raised his head to meet his teacher’s glare.

As the young man’s eyes met his teacher’s, instead of anger, he saw the compassion that had been there unnoticed since the conversation had begun. He then noticed a large round glass paperweight in the teacher’s aged hand. It was the kind of paperweight that one expected to shake, and see synthetic snow falling on the plastic figure within. Only this glass paperweight had no figure or snow. It was empty.

“Look!” the teacher commanded.

“It’s empty.” Replied the young man.

“Look again!” And as the young man leaned closer to the glass globe in the teacher’s hand, a figure appeared. It was not made of plastic, but seemed to be suspended inside the globe. The figure was seated on sand. No. It wasn’t just sand. It was a whole beach. In front of the seated figure, the ocean’s waves lapped at the shoreline not far from his bare feet. Intrigued by the images he saw materialize before his eyes, the young man looked closer. He recognized the faded blue jeans and nylon parka on the figure in the globe as the same faded blue jeans and nylon parka that he was now wearing. The figure in the globe was he! And without moving any closer, visions began to appear in the spray of the waves.

Visions. And he saw them as if through the eyes of the young man on the beach that was he. Visions. Pictures of his life from his earliest past right up to his present state. And not just images of his past. Not just images at all. His feelings appeared. His hopes and his dreams. His most secret thoughts. His innermost yearnings. Al were there in what seemed to be an endless cavalcade of impressions, as multitudinous as the grains of sand he sat on, or the droplets of spray that misted the air before his eyes. And yet he saw each one in its fullness. One at a time.

The ancient clock chimed twelve muffled chimes. And, all of a sudden, as if in response to the chimes of the ancient clock, the waters in the globe began to recede. The beach faded into the mists. The figure faded. The globe was slowly returning to its original clear state. And, as it did, the young man’s awe turned to anger. “No!” the young man said in anguish. “Bring it back!”

“No!” responded the teacher in a soft but firm voice.

“Bring it back!” the young man demanded, reaching out greedily across the desk toward the globe in the teacher’s hand. But the teacher’s hand was quick; and the globe flew across the room, crashing against the windowsill near the round wooden table with the small brass lamp perched atop it. Thousands of tiny shards of glass sprayed from the windowsill; and, for a brief moment, twinkled in the dim light, until they fell to the hardwood floor below. There was the tinkling of shattered glass. Then there was a deafening silence.

The young man rose from the chair with an anger he could barely control. “Bring it back!” he shrieked, slamming his palms on the edge of the great oak desk, and glaring into the teacher’s passive eyes. “Bring it back!”

“I can’t.” responded the teacher calmly. “Why don’t you bring it back?”

“I can’t!” cried the young man.

“Yes you can.” The teacher responded in the same calm voice.

“How?” the young man pleaded. His hands lifted from the desk, falling uselessly at his sides. His dead fell with the great weight of bitter disappointment.

“Look!” the teacher said, pointing his finger past the young man to the far corner of the room.

The young man looked in the direction of the pointed finger. The corner of the room was glowing with a bright white light. As curiosity replaced bitterness, the young man approached the source of the light. There, in the corner on a small table sat a computer. A word processor, to be exact. He had never noticed it there before. As he thought harder, he couldn't’t remember how it could have escaped his notice when he first entered the room.

What an odd sight it was. A word processor in a room that seemed better suited to house an old Underwood. As he stood before it staring at the white glow of the monitor, he heard the teacher’s voice over his shoulder. “Now you bring it back!”

“How?” the confused young man asked, still staring at the monitor.

“Write!” was the teacher’s calm reply.

As if in a daze, the young man numbly pulled the chair away from the machine and sat down in front of it. He placed his fingers on the keyboard. All of a sudden, as if by magic, images entered his mind. Slowly, at first. But, as he thought more, he began to remember all the fears, hopes, dreams, innermost thoughts and secret yearnings that he saw in the mind of the figure in the globe. Like droplets of the ocean’s spray, they came. Like the grains of sand. One at a time. And, as he stared down at his hands, he realized that he was typing. Looking up at the monitor, he saw the typed words that represented all of those visions like so many grains of sand. Like so many droplets of the ocean’s spray. He remembered the fear of failure that he had always felt. A fear that had gnawed at his every achievement, paralyzing every effort he made. The same failure that he feared as he entered this very room so many hours ago. He remembered all the aching hopes he had of achieving something he could call his own. And his dreams. His many dreams. And the dreams of those around him. All the images of his life, and the lives of others he had observed as he lived his life each day. And slowly, as he glanced at that monitor, he realized that many of these images were images that he had not seen in the globe. They were images that were pouring forth from his own mind. They were his own visions! And he typed furiously, unaware of the passing of time.

All of these visions became stories. Each vision – a different story with thousands of details to describe. He could not begin to detail them all now. He could only record them. He would detail them later, he thought, as he had use for them. And in the fury of his typing, he came very slowly to a greater awareness – that he was writing! For he was a writer.

When the fury at last was spent, he slumped back in the chair, and raised his aching hands to his face to rub his burning eyes. Reaching out in front of him, he pressed the button on the keyboard, and the soft whirring sound began, as the computer’s printer saved his night’s work. He stood and turned to stretch his stiff limbs; and, as he did, he saw pale pink light playing on the old hardwood floor. The ancient clock chimed six muffled chimes.

“It is finished.” He said, as he turned and walked toward the source of the light. He drew back the heavy cloth drapes. Then he turned toward the ornately carved desk to face the eyes of his teacher. But the teacher was gone.


When the young man had gathered his papers together, he walked toward the door he had entered ten brief hours ago. He turned to take a final look at the room in which he had worked so hard and had learned so much, and at the now empty desk of his teacher. “It is finished.” The young man repeated to the empty room. But as he turned to go, he heard a soft, dry chuckle.

“No.” a voice whispered in the empty air. “It is only beginning.”

Peace

Peace
Christopher Bogart

What is it about peace
That seems so allusive,
Defies definition,
So hard to describe?

We never are wary of defining our wars.
We know what war is,
And we rush to describe it,
In all of its glory,
And in all of its gore.

Yet when it comes to peace,
All description ceases.
We become dumbstruck,
Resorting to rhetoric,
And pious platitudes.

Why do words seem to fail us
When we describe peace?
Could it be the idea
Is as frail as the faint breeze
That stirs leaves in autumn?
Is it pink, like the sky of the sun’s early rising,
Or the salmon that streaks it at the sun’s final setting,
As it journeys so slowly on its trip to the west?
Is it seen in the sheen on a cheek of a newborn,
Or can it be found in the fall of a snowflake
As it drifts slowly down
To the frost-covered ground?

Or could it be
That it’s gleaned
From our deepest of dreams,
As a word, only heard when,
Our swords bent to plowshares,
Our ears prick to listen
In a singular silence
For the sound
Of one word:
Peace.

The Royal Oak

One of the pubs that I had a pint in while I was at Oxford University in 2005 was The Royal Oak. Named after the oak tree that Charles I hid in while trying to escape the Parliamentary Forces, this pub sits on Woodstock Road across from the Radcliffe Infirmary.

I sat in this pub on the afternoon of August 7Th with a pint and a pen and notebook, and wrote this poem.

The Royal Oak
Christopher Bogart

I am a trespasser with questions
Of these ancient oaken floors.

Who sat by this crumbling hearth,
Held together by yoke
Of black petrified wood,
Before?

What centuries of conversations
Do these white plaster walls contain?
What royal plans?
What rebel plots?
What brave ballads sung
Of England’s sons
So very long ago?

Who spoke the words
I hear now only in whispers,
Echoing soundlessly against
Their stained plaster?

I strain to hear –
But hear nothing…
Nothing but the clinking of glass
And the distant tunes
Of a very different present.

Will future trespassers who occupy this spot
Wonder…? I wonder.
Will it be to fantasize about …
Who wrote once on this bench
Beside the hearth?
What were his thoughts,
Held now
In these ancient oaken
Floors?

When Lilacs Last in my Backyard Bloomed

When Lilacs Last in my Backyard Bloomed
Christopher Bogart

When lilacs last in my backyard bloomed,
I wasn’t there to see them.

When I moved in, almost fifteen years ago,
I saw only the short stump of a cut down bush,

sitting in the soil by the chain link fence,
at the farthest edge of the property.

I had guessed the previous owner just didn’t like lilacs,
but I did, so I decided to give the little stump a chance.

Each spring, I went out to the back fence
to see what had become of the little lilac stump.

Each spring, new growth from that stump rose up and away
from the fence to face the warmth of each new spring sun.

Its leaves sprouting from its lengthening stems,
bright new, green and full of hope. But bud less.

For the first few years, new hope was
born again and again in those bright green shoots.

I tore down the chain link that kept it captive
and built a new wood fence, yet green was all it gave.

By year ten, I had all but given up on my lavender dreams,
glancing, only occasionally, out the back door to the border beyond.

In time, I accepted, as the stump seemed to accept, that
its role would be foliage, fill for the space at the back fence.

I glanced out only occasionally, afraid to hope,
afraid to see, afraid to dream deep purple dreams.

Then, one day, in the spring of the fifteenth year,
I heard a faint call from the stump at the back wood fence.

I approached to a view of its bright green leaves, new growth, new life,
and crowned with the lavender buds of my hopes and my dreams.

Summerhill Market

Over the last six months, I have cut out most of the carbs and sugar, and walked each night after work. And, predictably, I have lost 40 pounds. This morning, someone at work commented on how I should shop for new clothes because the ones I had on were swimming on me. I responded, "Yeah, I feel like Dondi." The look I got back at that comment let me know that they had never heard about the Italian orphan from World War II that was adopted by US soldiers and brought back to the United States. In short, he didn't have a clue what I meant. And I began to think about the little orphan, and a lot of other memories I have of the past, memories that I find fewer and fewer people each day to share with.

When I was 11 years old, we moved from a housing project in Queens to Spotswood, NJ. It was the first house I had ever lived in. And the red Schwinn was the first two-wheel bike I ever owned. And at any opportunity I could find, I rode down the hill to Summerhill Market, a grocery store that slaughtered its own meat and made its own ice cream. It was 1957.

Summerhill Market
Christopher Bogart

It was a bright red Schwinn bicycle that took me on that beautiful spring day in the May of my twelfth year to Summerhill Market on the important errand of replenishing the milk and bread supply. I felt the hot sun beat on my back as I cut through Clover Estates, traveling downhill on the fastest route to the only grocery store for miles. As I approached the bend in the road, I saw the market ahead of me, a small squat red brick building surrounded by fields of cattle waiting to be slaughtered by the butcher from the abattoir in the back of the store. I rode up to the silver bicycle rack in front of the store and braked, throwing gray gravel in all directions. Once I had pulled the bike into the silver rack, I entered the store.

The light was dim. It took me awhile to adjust my eyes from the bright sunlight of the world outside to the muted light within. The cool smell of damp wood and raw meat permeated the place. As I walked down the aisle to fetch the gallon jug of milk and the loaf of bread, I heard the muffled voices of the register clerk discussing the day’s events with a lone customer, punctuated only by the tapping of the keys and the register bell’s plaintive ring. Once my purchases were in hand, I had one more stop to make before checking out. In a deep freezer in the front of the store, I plunged my hand through frozen mists to emerge with a container of homemade, vanilla bean ice cream. Pulling off the container lid, the cool sweet smell of vanilla bean flecks assailed my nose, masking for a minute, all of the dank smells of the store. As I deeply inhaled the top of the container, visions of dessert tonight invaded my thoughts, driving out all that preceded them. I flipped the cover back on, bottling the ice cream genie for now, and proceeding to the counter to pay for my purchases.

Once outside the store, I mounted my trusty red Schwinn and with a push, I coasted across Summerhill Road and started peddling up the long hill to home, careless, carefree and warm with the sun on my face, and secure in the safety of my youth, a time that would turn out to be much shorter than I had realized.

From the window of my car I now see that there is a strip mall there on Summerhill Road. The field of cows and the squat brick building are gone. Replacing them are a video store, a Quick Check, a dry cleaners, and a place that offers a wide selection of CDs.

Rose Garden

Rose Garden
Christopher Bogart


Bleached white bones,
jagged,
sharp-edged,
Point like bony fingers,
ribs,
claws,
Paw dry soil
In a fruitless effort
to escape
their timeless shame,
Their buried fate.

Barren bits of lime,
point to
their crime,
The failure of their task
to guard
their charge,
their mollusk meat,
stolen
To feed the need
to survive.

I dig now
deep,
deeper.
The metal of my shovel tip
hits grit,
scoops sand, and
Their buried bones,
A treasure trove of shell,
In their earthen grave,
so wide,
so deep,
Forever keeping me
from my dreams
of roses.

Published in Saggio Poetry Journal (Fall, 2008)

Spring Sundays

When I began this blog, I made the promise to myself that I would write every day in order to improve myself as a writer and to open up my writing to comment with the hope of creating a conversation about writing and poetry, in particular. In order to find original areas to write about, I have looked to my life, each and every day, to provide me with inspiration. In that regard, I have been somewhat successful because much of what I have written about came from moments in my day, or in my week, that have inspired me to write something new, or to review some of what I have already written and revise it. Or sometimes, just preface it with new insights into the topics I have already written about.

This week was Holy Week, and the inspiration I drew from was insights into a religion I have been studying off and on for a lifetime. I was born a Roman Catholic, attended Catholic grammar schools, a seminary and a Catholic high school, and a Catholic Jesuit college, in which I was obliged to take a minor in theology, Catholic theology. As Mr. Macawber, in David Copperfield, used to say "In short..." the last few posts have been meditations on the religious. However, this is not a religious blog, nor was it ever meant to be. My religion has been a part of my life experience. However, my values and my spirituality I have drawn from numerous spiritual sources, not all of them Catholic. I studied Hebrew in college and said Kaddish for a year when my uncle died. I have prayed with Lakota Indians each month for over a year, and have read the Koran as well as the The Bhagavad Gita. What I have learned from these experiences is what the Hindus have believed for a long time, that there are many roads up a mountain, but there is only one mountain and one peak. While I am most familiar with the preaching of charity, love from my own Christian faith, I have found those same values in other religions as well. I value these principles, and get angry when those that preach them fail to live up to them.

So, today is Easter. It is the celebration of Jesus' resurrection and our redemption. It falls at a time of year; spring, when nature experiences a beautiful rebirth as well. As Jesus rose from the grave, so nature awakens from a cold winter. The poem I have chosen for today is one that does not have an overt religious message, but is a celebration of this rebirth. Happy Easter! Happy Spring!

Spring Sundays
Christopher Bogart

Every Sunday morning
should be a morning in Spring.

Spring Sundays enlighten the sky
with a peaceable hue, peacock blue,
to backlight blossoms of pink pale,
linen white. They bud bright
from bare branch
to slow falling avalanche,
petaling satin snow
down
to the warming brown ground
below.

A gentle breeze
meanders through leaves of
pale green new,
rustles limbs
that brush to the touch
from just so much
as an errant whisper,
a gentle bar of
the wind’s wild tune to
rattle ‘round the memory,

Composing a song
we can hear all day long.