Remembering Ophelia

1
Blood trickles down from the castle,
filling the flowers that fill her eyes.
2
Confused, and the victim of confusion…
How water clarifies the mind.
3
As they lay, littering the hall, in their blood,
she lingered in crumbling masonry and pillars,
in weeds and flowers intermarrying outside the walls.
4
Centuries later, she returned with a film crew.
She was wearing jeans, an Indian shirt embroidered
with flowers, and a headscarf.
He was still
lying there among the others with their sprawling
limbs and broken swords.
After the filming,
she took off her badge and pinned it to his chest —
Take the Toys from the Boys, it read — then left
without a farewell kiss, though she was compassionate,
and over the bitterness by now.
5
He wasn't mad because he knew he was mad.
She was mad because she didn't.
That's why he knew when he was dying,
but she didn't.
Did she know he wasn't mad?
No, because she couldn't.
Did he know she was mad?
— "Madam, I never think of such things!'
6
Invisible rape.
He had penetrated
and withdrawn
without laying
a finger on her.
You wouldn't
find it in any
statute book…
It made her think
the real thing
must be awful.
Sometimes, she
laughed and cried
for hours but
mostly there
was her sewing
now; and she
fiddled a lot
with her shawl.
7
He died surrounded by enemies who were really
enemies who were really enemies etcetera.
She died alone… But up on the hill
were autumn hedges full of leaves,
birds' eyes and knots of wood,
all watching.
8
The rats were leaving the castle,
grey drops sliding down escarpments —
prelude to some final loneliness.
9
She was surprised when they asked her to do
the flowers for the funeral — such an outsider
in her bare small plot against the wall.
"I suppose they want everyone to be involved,'
she thought, and agreed. It was a grand
State Funeral, of course, with a huge monument
plumb in the middle of consecrated ground.
She decided on violets, daisies, rue —
all her old favorites.
Strange, he had never
liked flowers. "Such frail things,' he'd winced,
"so ephemeral, so easily crushed … like you,'
he'd added with a sneer. "Oh, we're all mortal,'
she'd replied, "and anyway, I'm not afraid of ghosts!'
(She could stand up to him in those days.)
And how apt her words… Death had come for them
both, soon afterwards; and now she was a ghost,
and saw how natural it was, knew she'd been
perfectly right not to be frightened.
10
How could Ophelia, still in the mermaid state,
drown? On a bank of the river she combed her hair,
refreshed after her swim. A humble fisherman,
passing by, conceived an immortal love for her…
Merciful, she gave him a smile, and a nice big kiss,
and sent him home.
11
She could remember him much younger,
muscular chest and loins straining
through leather as he whispered,
"God, Ophelia, you're a real turn on!'
Her Mum had said, "Just keep your
distance for a while,' and then,
with a wink and a smile, "they get like
that sometimes — he'll get over it!'
Next, he had gone away to College,
and come back. ("A real hinterlectewal,'
sneered her Dad.) One day,
she met him in the High Street.
There was a long silence, then
she said, "Funny world, isn't it?'
"Rotten,' he said, and walked on.
He's just not interested, she thought,
just as I'm getting to be,
with all those fantasies of kissing,
and fondling, and swimming
naked in the river.
12
"It's not polite to leave the world without saying goodbye!'
That's what they told her on the Other Side, and sent her back.
Now she's a florist in Kensington. She knows the world
a little better this time round, is almost ready to say hello.