Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

The ghost of William Shakespeare to a pupil who accidentally conjures him whilst frantically writing an essay at 3 o’clock in the morning:

“Don’t wrap me up in the chains

of your poxy writing frames

or pick at my remains with your

‘point-evidence-explain’

or prod at my pentameters

or filter out my metaphors

without first knowing how they make you FEEL.

And don’t drain my soliloquies

with clinical analysis

or paraphrase some essayist

like some amateur ventriloquist,

just get thee to a library

and find something to LOVE.

 

The chances are the ghost of me

is in those pages too,

and, for now,

that’s enough,

so get gone

(I’ll be waiting for you).”

 

IOB 09.07.16

[Picture by Chris Beatrice, from the cover of Read Magazine, http://www.theispot.com/whatsnew/2010/12/chris-beatrice-inspired-by-shakespeare.htm]