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a
series of tanka by ryan casey
including text from Wlliam Shakespeare's as you like it
All
the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
At
first the infant
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
feeling your
infant hand
grasping my finger—
will you, too, lose
that sureness
Then
the whining schoolboy, with his satchel.
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
a dog's bark
through wind and snow—
my son's face against the window
expecting Mindy
buried two months
And
then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.
at the piano,
an etude—
I play for you
and there you sit
reading a book
Then
a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden, and quick in quarrel . . .
first day teaching—
entering the classroom,
I feel them size me up
Somehow, the hidden tattoo
Makes me feel brave
And
then the justice
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut . . .
in the confessional
the priest's
chuckling
"God help us all
if that's a sin"
The
sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon . . .
Thanksgiving dinner,
the youngest's voice shaking—
the family circle
tightens around
grandpa's hospital bed
Last
scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
good Friday
he gently turns
his wife's wheel chair
her dull eyes follow
the processing cross
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