Who can deny hubris when writing of love?
Who can define its quality, its chemistry?
Would some kind of litmus test explain
elusive feelings which at times glow red,
then purple, bright or melancholy blue?
Words, colours, values, all are suspect,
inviting paradox, equivocation.
Shakespeare chose to depict his lovers
through the prism of a midsummer dream
from which they wake in a dark wood,
each with a fresh and personal vision.
Such is Helena discovering her lover:
Mine own and not mine own
And Hermia finds her world grown double.
The huntsman’s horn has roused them.
Now gaiety prevails. Theseus, warrior king,
commands a play to celebrate his marriage.
Violence is banished. His choice?
a play of hot ice and magical snow:
Pyramus and Thisbe, a story
of tragical mirth, a concord of discord.
So the men of Athens take the stage
to entertain their betters, but Flute,
the bellows mender, first bewails
the absence of weaver Bottom, a sweet-
voiced paragon, who would play all parts,
even the role of Thisbe and a gentle Lion.
Bottom enters with a dream to tell
but decides perhaps it would
not shine in telling? Or did he
keep it to himself from hubris,
forgetting his partner in the vision,
the Fairy Queen, Titania, who sees
the dream of love quite otherwise?
Yet Bottom and his fellows carry wisdom.
In the scene they lack an actor’s skill
but outshine the lovers watching
who mock but lack the wit to see
themselves as asinine, mirrored in
the play where only Theseus’ bride
can appre-comprehend a meaning.
Does this play say that only Fools,
male and female touch the sense
of a tangled dual world, who see
loving music in a colour wheel,
red, blue, purple, green and grey,
a constant litmus mixed for all,
tragical, comical, wise man, fool?.
Some necromancy lingers in the loving.
So do gifted image-makers, poets, painters,
writers, actors, lovers, play astrologer,
pondering perhaps on love and adoration,
staring through a dark glass at the stars,
hidden by the sun’s light in the day,
a hand on Newton’s prism resting.
©Terry Hodgson2024
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