0296 Casting For A New Production Poem by Michael Shepherd

The second act went really well tonight,
pity it’s so near the end of the run,
it’s good enough for a West End transfer;
they’re a good bunch when we work together

no thanks, not tonight old man –
got some TV ad lines to learn,
well it’s good money for old rope…
seeyer chizmate

make-up off, stage door chat –
after a good perf., who wants to pub it,
hear yet again about how they triumphed together
in Romeo and Juliet god how many years ago
looking at them now – obscene..

*

When people used to tell me
how old people sat lost to the world
in a golden haze of memory,
I used to think
borING..! not me, not on your life…

but it’s not quite like that:
a touch of unexpected thought
may clothe loved actors in a new-stitched garb –
before you took the stage and they
were cast by you as your supporting roles –

they too were Romeo and Juliet,
throwing the curtains open on their red-eyed dawn…
and you, not even yet the twinkle
in the future’s eye…
they’d played the serving-maid, the page,
the jaunty clown, the flirt, the on-off, bright-eyed savagery -
the toilers in the burning, dusty sun,
the heroes in a life of war and peace,
had hopes you never knew or asked,
and then, invited you to join their cast…

these were such unknown people, just
as unimportant as you are seen as, now…
but loved, by those you never knew or thought of…

now, in your lean and slippered age
you can re-read their lines,
these fellow actors whom you thought
because they loved you, that you were their life…
now, as you re-write the stories of their lives,
cast them as beloved strangers