Classic Poem

The rushed and crowded auditors, the gesturing, hurrying figures on the stage,
The lights turned low, the silent watch, the unraveling plot,
The voice of tragedy, the foil of the wit of the clown,
The passion of some bewildering reminiscence in the trick of the voice,
The interplayed melancholy of violins, the uprisen ardor of flutes,
And I, alone, in the midst of all, with my grief.

Up from my seat I sprang,
At my command the auditors dispersed, the players disappeared from the stage,
I cried out my agony till the emptied house eloquently returned my plaint.
The house refilled with the duplicates of myself:
These forgotten and remembered figures filed in, phantomed echoes of departed experience:
One by one they came, quietly seated themselves in fore-doomed places —
None of them recognizing each other, all of them recognized by me:
Rudiments of deeds, dark limnings of error, outgrown inheritances and lost fortunes:
The players returned to pursue their parts, they but duplicated me many times over,
The play was the rehearsal of my sorrow and the brute demand for my enfranchisement —
Mad that I was, possessing the scene within my palm,
I alone, but many tongued with my grief.

Do you think, O actor, that it is you who act the play and that it is I who hear?
From your pedestal I command you — down on your knees to me!
I am your master, you find no play if you do not find me.
Partner player, you bring me myself in manifold disguises,
I am no more your auditor than you are mine, nor your patron paying for you out of my purse;
I pay nothing at the door: I pay only to you, and pay with drops of fostering blood:
And your return is but the return of myself, scorned, loved, in varied moods and habits,
But myself alone, myself

Dear player, I do fondly cherish you and am not less fondly yours,
We play our offices across the footlights, I dont know who plays most, or which side is the strangest drama:
In your dull despair or reawakened hope the walls of the house dissolve and we are of one essence engaged in an eternal venture.
The loud applause is incense but it does not deceive you or me:
Well do we know who made this play and why the gathered people turned it into a shrine and sacrificed on its altar,
You alone, dear player, with me alone, dear player also,
And the play house haunted.