Vox Populi
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Baron Wormser: Fool
After the fool leaves The Tragedy of King Lear, where does he go? Home to see the wife, play ringolevio with the neighborhood kids? Visit his local and tell a few tales about the impossible king. Indulge the riches of anachronism. No. He was a role not a person No other life held him, though there were speculations. How he was very like a cloud that came and went and came again and went. How he was words, rhymes: bit, hit, shit, wit, nit, quit. How he was an anarchist and thus impossible as the king (a man for whom no world could work) a droll idealist malcontent who lived on folly’s edge of permissible badinage. Later in the play no one stops and asks where the fool is. Tom o’ Bedlam shows up—a bigger fool, a closer fool, a self-conscious fool. Centuries later the fool appears in realist plays set in betting parlors and unemployment offices. He wears a tweed cap, a cigarette perched on his lower lip, A man full of ill-natured raillery about royalty, ungrateful daughters, lust, war. When he tells people the king is dead, they tell him to sod off. That’s when he leaves without a final gesture, without tears or giggles. Disposable. Thou wouldst make a good fool. Unknowable.
Copyright 2023 Baron Wormser
Baron Wormser’s many books include the collection of poems Unidentified Sighing Objects (CavanKerry 2015).
Vox Populi 
Powerful, ironic. Thank you Baron!
Sarah Z. Sleeper Author, Gaijin 858-357-7877 https://sarahzsleeper.com/
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Thanks, Sarah!
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Ah that brilliant fool – so perfectly alive in this poem!
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Yes, I agree…
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