The Immortal Ink

A quill of bone dipped in the midnight's ink, He carved the souls that on the ages think. No crown he wore, no armies at his call, Yet empires rise and crumble at his thrall. From Stratford's quiet to the London's roar, He conjured worlds that never were before. A king's ambition stained with bloody hand, A lover's sigh upon a foreign strand. He knew the jester's wit, the villain's sneer, The creeping doubt that breeds a nation's fear. The fragile beauty of a maiden's blush, The bitter venom of a serpent's hush. Did shadows whisper secrets in his ear? Did ancient muses quell each rising fear And guide his hand across the parchment white, To birth such visions bathed in truth and light? We pore his pages centuries flown past, And find ourselves within the mirrors cast. Our joys, our angers, love's ecstatic fire, The gnawing guilt, the unfulfilled desire. He was a potter who shaped us in his play, A simple man who saw the human way, The tangled threads of passion, fate, and will, And wove them deftly with his poet's skill. The Globe has crumbled, players turned to dust, But still his voices rise defying rust. "To be or not to be," the question rings, A timeless echo that existence brings. He touched the core of what it means to be, This fleeting fragile human entity. So let us ponder as his dramas cease, The enduring wonder of this mind at peace, Whose words still breathe though flesh and bone are gone, A testament to what a soul has drawn From depths unknown a legacy so vast, William Shakespeare whose shadow still is cast. ©bfa041125