April 29, 2005: King Lear Considers What He's Wrought, Melissa Kirsch
King Lear Considers What He’s Wrought
Melissa Kirsch
Everyone worships the daughters,
skirts the shade of cake frostings, Teflon
idolettes, pedicured, hemophiliac
overpretties, laughing on the inside.
The boys are corn-fed and prep-schooled,
mirror-stuck, the milksops! Woe
unto the boldest of them, for who-so-
ever shall venture to pen a verse
for a Lear girl’s hand let him
wither, unaided, in locker rooms,
let him be caught with his hand down his trousers.
The king is aware that parenting is a loose science,
performed by foglight, and so forgives himself.
He too was barely tended to, was made and then undone.
Who’s Lear’s daddy? He was a bastard, a salty dog.
Dear Cordelia. The boys would still like to press
a peony behind her ear, pack up her petticoats,
and take her away to somewhere-upon-somewhere.
Even penniless, there’s something so irresistible
about a girl with nothing to prove.
[I like this poem because, among other things, it proves I don’t
always have to understand everything that’s going on to enjoy
something. Plus it’s *Lear*, my very favorite play. And I guess this is
another poem about parenting and the relationship between parents and
children; among the many interesting side effects of this month-long
project has been seeing what the themes are of the poems I tend to
like. Like, uh, this. Plus the line “who’s Lear’s daddy? He was a
bastard, a salty dog.” makes me inexplicably wistful.]
