Hamlet:Regret

He sat as one, as one alone, but with the many.

One among some rows of sunk sorrowed heads.

He set his own grief aside but only when he

Lifted dry sore eyes that turned and led

To a crumpled site. Mother, too, sat alone,
A creased and jagged black heaping pile
Like an unhewn, sphalerite onyx stone
That shed dark tears. For all the while

Father sat displayed, arrayed in gold,
Plated and protected, and also altared,
A warrior protecting a now ashen soul
Enshrined. Father and son could bear

No strain to such a sympathetic turn;
One too dead inside, the other ground so fine,
Insurance against the feasting worms
That, like talkers to the dead, like to dine.

Who defends, who acts, when the man of cloth
Rises up as expert and starts to spew
Sans brevity? Yet more of Larkin's moth-
Eaten brocade, a deadening world-view

That denies both life and destined death.
There is no deep down meaning if
Instead of celebrating life's real wealth,
We must hear from men who seem convinced

It is to be deferred as only judgment.
So he sat in grief. Even more in vain.
Only now as indecisive as if he then
Played the part of the vacillating Dane.

To rise up! To speak! To take a stand!
To convey in love what god's agent could not:
To celebrate the love of what once was the man.
He might relay in deed and memory just a jot,

Remembrances perhaps, some kind words.
He sat alone in grief and thought of what to say.
From the aperture he heard sweet songs of birds.
He never moved. He put his poisoned sword away.