The stage
Is as bare as my lady’s ass
In his lordship’s bedchamber.
Rough-hewn
In the most knockabout way,
Leaving splinters
In the palace lawns of the imagination.
There’s many a dip ‘twixt the trap and the lip.
It fares little better
Than hastily strewn boards
Covering parched ground,
With barely enough elevation
To keep the understanding masses at bay.
Were one fool enough
To come from out the wings,
And at centre front
Begin a soliloquy about the beauty
Of the wretched arena on which he stands,
To fight the resulting
And justified
Spontaneous combustion,
There would not be found one drop of piss
From any a Thespian’s hose.
For who,
Could allow
This sacrilege to be spoken?
Even the flag atop the pole knows
The magic is not yet arrived.
A stage without commercial trappings:
without solid doors and thick drapes;
uncluttered by pillars and arches,
tables and chairs,
windows and fireplaces;
sans orchestra,
sans balcony,
sans pit.
A stage revealing all its secrets.
Profound as emptiness.
A stage in wait.
For in this world writ small
– as in the globe around –
the audience has nothing to know,
nothing to learn,
until the actor makes an entrance,
prepares to fight past our eyes
to battle with those thoughts
and fears
which lurk in sheltered halls.
What’s Hecuba to him?
Why – nothing.
Merely a name in a script,
A cue at which to turn his profile thus.
It is what Hecuba becomes to we who wait,
that turns the key upon the heavy gate.
~DE BA. UE
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