Caliban’s Last Stand

This is a poem and video I made for Shakespeare In Community online course. After you’ve watched my video you may be interested in a talk about Caliban given by Bruce Pattinson on Total Education – top left on the video collage.

Caliban Alone

My keeper left me on this Isle, free of chains; now
I’ll be steward to this Eden, free to govern golden
earth; to cultivate and grow figs and dates, and feast on fish
and crabs from the shore. I’ll drink from the best springs,
pluck the ripest berries and filch the blue bird’s nest.
Thus will I live unto my last expiring breath.
All I lack is a prosperous maid, but hark, I’ll prosper
on Fortune’s winds. I have Ariel’s rainbow music
to soothe my lonely soul. Farewell, be sorrow’s maid
and think of all this fleeting world as a star at dawn,
a bubble in a stream, a child’s laugh, a phantasm, a dream.
We are such stuff – Farewell – I’ve wood to fetch, meanwhile.

You are the girl who danced

One of the assignments on an online poetry course I’m doing was to write a Pantoum. This is a poem where lines 2 and 4 have to repeat in lines 1 and 3 in the following stanzas. And usually the end line is the same as the very beginning. This is mine.

You are the girl who danced in the night kitchen –
I am the woman who built a prison.
You are the girl who opened a door –
I am the woman who counts each day.

I am the woman who built a prison –
You are the girl who stopped the sun.
I am the woman who counts each day
and pins each bird onto the sky.

You are the girl who stopped the sun –
I am the woman who measures her wings
and pins each bird onto the sky – but
the moon falls down – onto the ground.

I am the woman who measures her wings.
There are stars and daggers pinned onto the wall.
The moon falls down onto the ground –
a Fool with a coin darts out of the moon.

There are stars and daggers pinned onto the wall.
I am a woman who clutched at a shadow –
a Fool with a coin darts out of the moon.
You are the girl who danced in the night kitchen.