SHADOW IN THE COURT OF GOOD KING FORTINBRAS

The good king Fortinbras,

the gift of fjords and fells,

after much bloodshed came

and easier than Caesar took.

A foreign king, but

kings are always aliens

to the people their crown

commands;

they stand apart,

they bleed apart,

they lay in state apart

and rot in crypts apart

from those their sceptre

orders and sends to war,

scaffold or to glory, like

that ghost of a court past,

Horatio, shadow of the

mad prince; a warning

more than adviser he stood

on Fortinbras side -

reminding the son of

the northern wastes

how princes go astray

and kings are slain.

10.05.2019