THESE CLEVER PRINCES

Why can't these clever princes

stay in their universities,

without making trouble?

So what if uncle-stepfathers

had killed their fathers and

now slept with their mothers?

That is, after all, what

kings do. They covet things,

they kill people; the old ghost-king

in his prime took half of Norway. 

King Claudius was old, childless,

just warming the throne

for young Hamlet prince;

youth should have let age handle

the Norwegians, regicide or not,

have its brief crowned years

beside a withering body in bed.

Hamlet prince, he only had to wait.

So what if Hamlet king

as a restless ghost wandered

the walls at night? That

is a thing for the priests to handle,

to placate a troubled soul,

release it to go and rest or suffer

 in Heaven or Hell; not for

princes who have thrones waiting,

daughters of Polonius to play with,

titles to hand in exchange of bastards.

So much trouble, so much death,

and a foreign, haughty king

ruling over us, because the prince

in madness listened to a ghost.

14.05.2022

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