The best in this kind are but shadows…
As if the world could disappear
by the flickering of a chandelier,
the chatty audience is hushed.
…………………………………Gay, well groomed,
……………………..we are ourselves costumed
in the dark of seats we’ve student-rushed.
In rapt attention to the empty stage,
we’re brought into a different age
peopled with actors who, by rote,
…………………………..profess their passions
…………………..after long-dead fashions
with words an English writer wrote.
Unreal appearances, devised
so you and I can act surprised,
though, at times, we’re more than a bit
………………………………..buttoned-up.
…………………….Tight corsets cup
their non-existent breasts, as they flit
about—the fairies played by males.
They’re boys dolled up in farthingales,
one disbelievingly suspended
……………………………….from a wire.
……………………..When he goes higher,
we’re worried that the play has ended.
How many times, with up-cast eyes,
have I seen a face I recognize?
The strung-up actor—all his weight
………………………………..held up in air—
…………………we’d seen once as King Lear,
a figure shuttling fate to fate
across the shows in this year’s season.
I know I shouldn’t use such reason.
Actors were “shades” in Shakespeare’s day,
…………………………………like Virgil’s dead,
…………………….whose almost-bodies tread
the distance of reality.
The shadows that we cast tonight,
two bodies intercepting light,
seem the same, though we’re unseen.
…………………………………We’re alive.
………………………Next to you, I strive
in the relative darkness of the scene
to, in a way, feel bodiless—
or to imagine your body as
my own. It’s why I shadow you,
…………………………your shade, to hunt
…………………some shade of what you want,
the same as ghosts and actors do.
Richie Hofmann
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