Rita Dove – Nov 30, Iyengar Level II & I

Kind of how I am feeling as yet another Covid variant looms. Maybe we are all just “building a playlist for the apocalypse”?

Shakespeare Doesn’t Care

…

Shakespeare's taking no prisoners:

he's purloined the latest gossip

to plump up his next comedy,

pens a sonnet while building

a playlist for the apocalypse.

When you gripe at reviews, he snickers:

How would you like

to be called an "upstart crow”

just because you dared write a play

instead of more "sugared sonnets"?

How's them apples next to your shriveled

sour grapes? As for the world going to hell (alas! alack! whatever),

ditch the dramatics: He's already done

a number on that handbasket.

what with pox and the plague

bubbling up here and there,

now and then—afflictions

one could not cough away nor soothe

with piecemeal science. So chew it up

or spit it out, he might say,

although more likely he'd just shrug.

What does he care

if we all die tomorrow?

He lives in his words. You wrestle,

enraptured, with yours.

What time does with them

next, or ever after,

is someone else's rodeo.