Ophelia

I am the forgotten

Ophelia

Lay down to a muddy death

Fallen off a willow tree

Balance was never a forte

Of a falling woman like me.

The sound of my water stifled weeps

Cannot be heard through the hasty beeps

Of impatient machines

Of a world where there is no grief

And everyone moves on

Easily.

I am disregarded

For a soliloquy

Victim to Hamlet’s

To be or not to be?

Ponderings that should not concern

A hysterical woman like me.

What dreams had you, Ophelia?

What agonies?

As you felt the water seep

And swallow you deep.

Even as it ruined

Your stockings and high heels?

I consider this poem almost incomplete. Having worked extensively on the question of the representation of women in literature this year, and especially on the question of melancholia and women, this is something I have been thinking about obsessively. Traditionally, female grief has always been degraded to the level of hysteria and madness. While male sorrow is somewhat more dignified and intellectual, often termed “melancholia”, depression among women has been an issue that has not been dealt with very well by male writers. Tragic female figures are always doomed to silence; either by death or madness. One such figure is Ophelia, victim to Hamlet’s selfishness. I had planned on writing something more serious and sympathetic, but what came out was something with an almost-tongue in cheek tone to it. Nevertheless, I ask myself what Ophelia would have done if she hadn’t been killed off by Shakespeare. Perhaps a question we should all ask ourselves.
For those of you who know me personally, you will inevitably link what I write about to what has been going on in my life. And while I cannot really put an end to such interpretations, I would like to say that words come not only from within, but also without.