THE LARK AT HEAVEN'S GATE

Enough of this! Ah, you are clever, Horatio,

A practiced felon at covering your crime

And mazing your pursuers. But the smell of murder

Has a way of sticking to the murderer,

Slowing him down, confounding him at last.

And though you pace this room from end to end

Seeking an exit, you cannot take that door

Which, open wide, reveals in the shadow beyond

The servant who does not know he is your jailer,

But waits your pleasure. Return therefore at bay

To your table and chair, your pen and ink and paper

That mark your crime and flight. Here are inscribed

The steps, the method by which you murdered Hamlet—

­Or let us say you murdered him long since,

With the actual deed committed by your friends,

The red-faced ostler, Carlus and the rest,

While you looked on, not terribly unwilling

To have your burdensome friend at last disposed of,

And now, this night, as the dock-hands near their eclipse,

Bury his corpse, or find it a deeper grave

So the smell will no longer taint your waking hours;

Or lay his ghost to cleanse your dreams of remorse.

I do not need to peruse these crabbed pages

Retracing the labyrinth of my thought, to know

That in the work of this night I have become