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).