Breath of bards

this is another one of those pitiful old gentlemen I passed daily while at Woodlands. In the freezing cold of January, out on the front sidewalk puffing away. I speculated him being an old actor mumbling his lines from Shakespeare's Henry the fourth.

by john clare

Between the second act of life
what is left
but the five-minute intermission
smoke break
lungs shot to hell
forgotten chain-smoking thespian
the lines of the bard mumbled
"Nor moody beggars
starving for a time
of pell-mell havoc and confusion"
The sullen orderly wheels
Henry the Fourth
off stage to room five
with curtains drawn.
Yellowed fingers tremble
Bed-bound the encore cord
not found
Over and over the lines lipped:
"Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,
But not remember'd in thy epitaph!"