OR NOT TO BE

          OR NOT TO BE

“To be or not to be, that is the question,”

the most famous of all questions,

which every schoolboy knows,

but few can remember the answer

because the author switches theses

toward the end of Hamlet’s soliloquy:

“to be or not to be” becomes

“to do our not to do”

as currents turn awry

and lose the name of action.

Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

our feckless hero chooses not to do,

which is why he wishes not to be.

    September 14, 2005