Let me explain myself a little in poetry -
I’ve no authority to talk of other things, or right.
I was conceived the proper way: sinfully -
In the sweat and stress of a wedding night.

From the beginning, I knew the way of things:
The higher we rise, the sterner we must be.
I moved with certainty, knowing I’d be king,
And I behaved with princely majesty.

I was sure the world would fall my way.
I would never feel inferior or cast down.
And all my friends at school or in swordplay
Would serve me, as their fathers, and the crown.

I never thought for a second what I said -
I just scattered my words upon the breeze.
And these high-ranked children gave me my head:
What I suggest, everyone agrees.

We became the very plague of everyone’s life;
Even the night watch were scared of us.
I slept on skins, and ate meat off the knife -
And tormented any horse that made a fuss.

I knew, one day, they’d say to me: "You reign!"
From my birth, I was branded with this mark.
I was giddy in the harness, not quite sane -
Words and books were just another lark.

I could smile with lips alone convincingly
And hide my anger closed within my head,
Because a fool had trained me perfectly -
"Alas! Poor Yorick!" Now the fool is dead.

But, one day, I refused my share in the divide
Of the rewards and privileges of kings.
I felt new sympathy for the little page who died,
And quietly steered around the green saplings.

The very’ thought of hunting made me sorry.
I even began to hate all the hounds.
I’d spur my horse away from wounded quarry
And lash the beaters fiercely from their bounds.

With each passing day, our games to me
Seemed like violent rampage more and more
And each night, I was washing secretly
To cleanse myself of the filth of war.

I became more oblivious each day,
I missed entirely the intrigues of family
I detested the people around me and their ways.
And buried myself in all my books avidly.

I sought knowledge, like a spider, greedily.
I devoured each theory as it unfurled.
But what’s the point in science and philosophy
When they’re firmly rebutted by the world?

Ties to childhood friends frayed in me;
Ariadne’s thread turned out to be a plot!
I fretted over "to be or not to be,"
As if it was an undoable knot.

But this sea of troubles rolls on and on,
And our arrows fall like millet through a sieve
We sift only ghostly answers, ’til they’re gone,
To the most pretentious question ever conceived.

Through the soft hum, I heard my forebears’ call
And followed. But doubts caught up with me.
Heavy thoughts slowed me to a crawl
And my solid flesh pulled graveward cruelly.

The days soldered me to alloy so soft
That it crumbled even as going hard.
I’ve shed blood like everyone so oft
That I could not deny vengeance’s card.

My route to death’s a failure so far.
Ophelia! I do not accept decay.
But by murder I made myself on par
With the one I in the soil did lay.

I am Hamlet. I despised violence entirely.
I cared nothing at all for the Danish crown.
Yet for it, to them, I fought so savagely
That I killed my rival and bought him down.

The spark of genius is like a fever -
At its birth, death looks askance.
We go on answering trickily for ever,
Yet we don’t ask the right question once.