Critic’s Corner

I told the author of the play
it was a rhapsody,
a madrigal,
pieces of a broken heart,
deafness following the explosion
of the soul.
Then I left,
feeling the illness of bad wine,
the coil of a snake in my stomach.
The play had the shadows
of a ghost,
the darkness of a river bottom.
It dealt with honor without honesty,
pretense, denying nakedness,
and fell into a cistern
where hypocrisy looked up.
Begging to be set free,
to crawl from the well
and be relieved of its crime.
Perhaps the author sensed what he had done
and dismissed my praise later,
in which case I excuse his failure.