The curtain goes up on a dark stage. Nothing new in
that. Nor the fact that it is Hamlet being staged. But the
dark spills over onto the audience. Seeps out. Like the
uncontrollable fog that envelops the heath. The red
glow of the Exit signs is off. As is the line of floor lights
to illuminate the aisles. There is neither music nor
sound. Just the dark. Stifling and strangling.
The comfort of a slowly restless audience begins to
unravel into anxiety.
The dark refuses to go away.
The curtain needs to rise on a mass of darkness. Not the
kind that chokes your breath the moment you release it.
Or amputates your outstretched hands because it is so
close to you. Not, in other words, a dark that
disembodies. But a lesser dark, if there is such a thing.
One in which your eyes may adjust. Eventually glimpse
the mass of stairs on the barely revealed stage. Stairs
that stretch in pyramids. Interrupted in their climb.
There is still no sense of light as we expect it on stage.
Just an ambient glow. From an unknown source. The
creeping in of a crippled dawn.
The actor steps out of the shadows onto a glowing
rusted iron stairway. And suddenly you see that the
staircases are all upside down. The pyramids have been
inverted. The actor now begins the slow climb down.
To what would have been the top of the staircase but is
in fact the pit at the centre of the amphitheatre.
Something harsh with the swish of a whiplash strikes
the white and you realise even as you blink that a
powerful beam of light has struck her dead. Ophelia in
her customary white.
Still.
Hamlet. Abandons his crutches. Bends down and
cradles her. Tender. And confused. Begins to murmur
into her dead ears. His throat rusted with the bitter metal taste of sorrow.
Blunt. Time.
tongues “choke”
over
speech
chalk-coated
daylight
knocks all night long
at eyes stitched
shut
blunt time
refuses
a strange reticence
laps at the shores reason
refuses
blinks
“set sail rumour”
without
tailwind
“scatter
stars”
in the dead of night
upon the seabed restless
scars
below
the ocean
a sea of shrouds
still
clouds
stare
the silver “gather rust”
unsteady flame
“flicker” impatient wind
“resist
khaki shadows”
jackboots on the march
“hide”
a painted smile
“clutch” a handful of dreams
hope takes wing
alphabet
bloodless pale shadow
a once-bloodied self
Excerpted with permission from Ode to a Grieving Angel: Poems, Naveen Kishore, Speaking Tiger Books.
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